What’s Current: Oxfordshire teen challenges school’s trans policy allowing males to use girls’ washrooms

  • A 13-year-old girl is challenging Oxfordshire County Council’s transgender policy, which the teenager says gives “no right to privacy from the opposite sex.” The policy allows trans-identified individuals to use bathrooms, changing rooms, and dormitories based on their gender identity.
  • Female genital mutilation (FGM) will take centuries to eradicate, despite promises to end the practice by 2030, according to United Nations data. Gambian activist and survivor of FGM, Jaha Dukureh, says the practice will not end unless women are lifted out of poverty and donors stop giving money to ineffective aid programmes.
  • Pakistan’s top court rules that the forced marriage of a 14-year-old girl who was abducted from her home is valid under Sharia law. According to law, men can marry underage girls as long as they have begun menstruating.
  • NASA astronaut Christina Koch sets a new record after completing the longest single spaceflight undertaken by a woman.
  • A new generation of Maasai women in Kenya are refusing to practice FGM in favor of educating girls and creating an alternative rite of passage for women.
  • A 25-year-old man accused of raping a five-year-old girl on the premises of the US embassy in Delhi, India has been arrested and charged.
Meghan McCarty

Meghan McCarty is an undergraduate student and aspiring journalist living in the United States.