Every morning, Courtney faces a problem most women never have to think about. She must squeeze herself into a bra several sizes too small. 

Courtney wears a size GG, but the bras offered by Kentucky’s prison system are poorly made and only come in small or large sizes, the latter still too small for Courtney. She can also purchase a bra through the catalog that supplies the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women, where I am also detained, but the catalog’s biggest size is a DDD, four cup sizes smaller than what she needs.

She doesn’t have the choice to forgo wearing a bra; it’s a mandatory part of the uniform. Her only option, she said a guard once informed her, was to buy the largest size available and “make it work.” 

The constant discomfort and pain Courtney endures are a daily reminder that the Kentucky prison system fails to meet women’s most basic needs. 

Courtney, who requested I only use her first name because she fears retaliation, isn’t the only woman struggling to find a decent bra. I wear a DD. I used to be able to choose between a few affordable Hanes bras with proper support, but those are no longer stocked. Now my only choices are cheap sports bras that provide almost no support, or a $40 bra that doesn’t do much either. Instead, I have to wear two sports bras at once to reduce the pain in my neck and back. 

And that’s just the beginning. Here are a handful of other ways women lose out in a system designed for men.

Clothes and shoes

It’s not just bras that don’t fit. Nearly all shirts, shorts, sweatshirts and sweatpants available through the Union Supply Direct catalog, the official source for Kentucky facilities, are sized for men’s bodies. With few equivalent offerings in women’s sizes, we are left to guess what men’s size is closest to our bodies and hope something fits. 

Both the Kentucky Department of Corrections and Union Supply did not respond to requests for comment. 

Shoes are another problem. According to the catalog’s offerings, incarcerated men can choose between around 30 different brand-name shoes. In our facility — Kentucky’s only state prison for women — we have about six choices, some of which are frequently out of stock.

Amenities and rec space

These gendered economies of scale affect food access, too. Families can often supplement food through private vendor programs, like iCare, which allow people to buy better meals such as hamburgers, pizza, wings and desserts for incarcerated loved ones. But iCare only operates in men’s prisons here. We have not had the program for more than three years.

This is likely because the aging kitchen facilities at our prison are too limited — a problem that creates inequalities in the recreation yard as well.

For over six months, the limited kitchen has caused food service trailers to take over much of our outdoor recreation space, a situation that could last another year or more. As a result, we have gone from two treadmills for around 700 people to just one. By contrast, when Western Kentucky Correctional Complex relied on similar temporary food service trailers, men kept access to outdoor recreation areas. We know this because some women here corresponded with significant others or relatives at that men’s prison.

During this takeover, we have also lost access to a baseball and softball field and a sand volleyball court. Many women used to walk around outside to relieve their stress, gather for fellowship meetings, or hold conversations in a more private setting, but that’s harder to do now.

Visitation

Even visitation policies reflect gender inequality. With fewer facilities, women are more likely than men to be housed farther from home, making visits harder. And while many men’s prisons offer regular weekend visits and weekday options, the visitation schedule here — like at many women’s facilities across the country — is much more limited. The administration cites low staffing levels and a lower budget. 

At our prison, we only get Sunday visitation, but each of us is also restricted to visitation every other week, depending on whether we have an odd or even identification number. Western, the men’s facility, gets Saturday and Sunday visits and has no odd and even restrictions. In general, we get two visits per month compared to four visits per month for the men.

My children, with busy lives of their own, sometimes can’t make the few visiting days available each month. My older father struggles, too. Visitors can’t bring coats or umbrellas inside. If bad weather falls on one of the few visiting days, he simply cannot come.

One-size-fits-all punishment

Women are also punished by system-wide restrictions like broad lockdowns and disciplinary policies that stem from violations in men’s prisons. About a year ago, we all lost access to instant messaging privileges and unlimited tablet calling from the privacy of our rooms, after incarcerated men were caught running a commissary scam through the tablet system in 2024.

In these cases, men were caught abusing a glitch in the prison system’s electronic tablets that allowed them to steal a lot of money on multiple occasions, which led to prison officials ending our ability to move money from our trust account to our Securus debit account. 

Since then, we only get four calls a day from a public phone room — no more calls from our tablets — and our messages sometimes take days to reach family members because they are now screened by humans, rather than an automated system, in response to people using the system to communicate about drugs or running gangs. Pretty much any time there is a scandal involving the men, state prison administrators tighten the screws on us.

Economic barriers

Researchers have documented how prison systems designed for men fail to meet the diverse needs of incarcerated women. And the disparities we face while in prison affect our futures even after our sentences have ended. National reviews have found incarcerated women are offered fewer and less marketable vocational programs that could land them jobs once they are out. At my facility, vocational and educational offerings skew toward cosmetology and sewing factory work, while men’s prisons tend to provide a broader range of hands-on trades and technical training opportunities. 

Kentucky has already been court-ordered to fix these inequalities. More than 40 years ago, Pat Canterino brought a class-action lawsuit alleging she and other women at this very prison were denied the same educational, vocational and institutional opportunities available to men. A federal court agreed with her. In the 1982 ruling, the court found that women were denied access to vocational programs that could realistically translate into employment after release. The ruling in Canterino v. Wilson was supposed to change things. But until Kentucky women’s prisons are resourced as full institutions with equal priority, stark differences will remain.