— That is the highest rate of unemployment among any age group of men and women over 20. Rates for young Black women and Latinas were even higher at 24.5 percent and 25.2 percent, respectively.
— Some progress was made in July as women gained close to two in three of the 1.8 million jobs that were added to the economy. Despite that increase, “there were still 6.9 million fewer women employed in July than in February, which means that only about two in five of the jobs women initially lost have returned,” according to an email from the National Women’s Law Center.
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LGBTQ+ —
After years of protest, a top hospital ended intersex surgeries. For activists, it took a deep toll.
By Kate Sosin
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Sean Saifa Wall, a co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, which has protested intersex surgeries at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago for years. (Sarah-Ji, Intersex Justice Project)
Eugene Robinson recovered from his double mastectomy on a hospital porch in Durham, North Carolina. It was August 1956, and as a Black child in the Jim Crow South, Robinson wasn’t allowed to heal next to White patients.
Sarah Robinson, Eugene’s mother, brought a daughter to the hospital. She returned home with a son. It was his third of four surgeries. Two of his nine siblings had undergone similar operations, but his relatives never talked about the fact that androgen insensitivity syndrome, a genetic intersex condition, ran in the family.
Nearly 65 years later, Sean Saifa Wall, 41, sifts through Robinson’s medical records, looking for answers about his uncle’s story that might shed light on his own. Wall, like Robinson, is intersex.
Intersex is an umbrella term for people with variations in sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly in the binary of male or female. Some intersex people are born with varying reproductive anatomy or sex traits — some develop them later in life. About 1.7 percent of people are born intersex, according to a 2000 report by Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling.
Since the 1960s, medical convention has been that intersex variations should be “corrected,” often through a combination of painful surgeries and hormone therapy starting from infancy or before a child can consent. But on July 28, the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago became the first hospital in the United States to suspend the operations. The news comes after a three-year campaign against the hospital led by Wall and Pidgeon Pagonis, co-founders of the Intersex Justice Project.
Activists have been protesting intersex surgeries since 1996, when a group demonstrated outside the American Academy of Pediatrics’ convention in Boston. Since then, the UN has condemned the surgeries — which remain legal in almost every country in the world — as “irreversible” and unnecessary procedures that can cause “permanent infertility and lifelong pain, incontinence, loss of sexual sensation, and mental suffering.”
Read the full story: After years of protest, a top hospital ended intersex surgeries. For activists, it took a deep toll.
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We’re thrilled to kick off The 19th Represents, our inaugural summit, with a series of conversations on political firsts. Join us Monday beginning at 1 p.m. CT (2 p.m. ET) for our opening keynotes with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois; a special performance of “Club Zero” by The Go-Go’s; and a panel conversation with political trailblazers, including former New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Virginia Del. Danica Roem, Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
Or follow along with @19thNews and #19thRepresents on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Can’t make it to Monday's livestream? We’ll be hosting conversations with more women reshaping American politics, policy and civic discourse all week. Find the full schedule here.
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People with HIV are expected to be included in two major federally-backed COVID vaccine trials, a major victory for advocates. The move by drug developers could have far-reaching implications for Black women and transgender people, who are at heightened risk for both HIV and the novel coronavirus.
The news comes after a vocal campaign by advocacy groups, who argued that excluding people with HIV from trials creates undue risk. But it leaves unsettled a larger debate about who gets to be included in early vaccine tests and who gets to benefit from the COVID immunization that first comes to market.
Read the full story: COVID-19 vaccine trials to extend to people with HIV by Shefali Luthra
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Curated by May Olvera
Have something you think we should recommend? Tell us or tweet at us using #19thShares.
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Black mothers face high death rates. Now they have to contend with climate change, too. The U.S. is the only developed country with a rising maternal mortality rate. Black women are particularly vulnerable for a number of complex reasons, and studies are finding that climate change plays a significant role. (Popular Science, August 4)
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How lockdowns have helped improve some mother-daughter relationships. A cultural anthropologist studied 500 families in lockdown and found the majority are building stronger familial bonds than ever before, particularly between mothers and daughters. The relationships fostered in this pandemic could have significant long-term benefits. (Healthline, August 5)
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Why are child care programs open when schools are not? The pandemic has given way to debate about what qualifies as child care. Some educators take offense to schools being compared to child care programs, arguing that education is more than just a way to keep children occupied while their parents work — but child care workers say the argument downplays the importance of socialization they provide in children’s development. (The New York Times, August 4)
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Pope Francis names six women to senior Vatican positions. The Vatican’s Council for the Economy includes eight clergy members and seven laypeople with an expertise in economics. This week, the pope announced six of the expert positions would be filled by women, making them the most senior female officials ever to serve at the Vatican. (The Wall Street Journal, August 6)
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Worried parents have become an easy target for online misinformation in this pandemic. With little time to sift through primary sources — and at a time of major information overload — parents are taking to social media to find any information that might help them make high-stakes decisions for their children. What they’re stumbling upon are troves of misinformation — and they’re spreading it to other parents. (Vox, August 6)
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🎧 Listen: Solving the child care crisis. During World War II, high-quality government-run child care was provided to all employed mothers for the duration of the war so they could work. The policy resulted in lifelong economic benefits for their children, and economist Betsey Stevenson thinks that kind of federal investment is what we’ll need in order to alleviate the current and post-pandemic economic crisis. (What Next via Slate, August 6)
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📺 Watch: Women's suffrage movement used cookbooks as a recipe for change. The fight for women’s suffrage didn’t just take place on the street and in political circles, but also in kitchens and lunchrooms where housewives and teachers started conversations with people who otherwise didn’t want to talk politics. (USA Today, August 5)
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