ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad overview of women in corrections, specifically focusing on women in prisons, with the provision of how differences within women and their experiences emerge when intersectionality is provided as a framework. The chapter reviews incarceration rates, highlighting the fact that women’s rates continue to increase while men’s rates of incarceration have decreased. As well, key explanations for changes in female incarceration rates are offered. The chapter concludes with the identification and summary of issues that women face during incarceration that are specifically driven by their sex. These topics include: pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood; access to menstrual hygiene products; and victimization in prison, particularly by staff. The chapter is intended to present an overview of these issues to highlight the fact that women, because of their sex, experience incarceration and prison differently than do their male counterparts, and that there are differences within these experiences that are identified when an intersectional lens is employed.
