Poverty, discrimination, and cultural stigma around mental health are among reasons mentioned by experts

• Black mothers twice as likely as white mothers to be hospitalised with perinatal mental illness

Perinatal mental illness affects up to almost a third (27%) of new and expectant mothers across England and covers a range of conditions including postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. A Guardian analysis of NHS figures has shown that for instances of perinatal mental illness that result in hospital admissions, black patients are more than twice as likely to be admitted than their white counterparts.

Part of the reason why black mothers are more at risk of perinatal mental illness is because black people are more at risk of experiencing mental illness in general.

Exclusive: Analysis of NHS England figures highlights structural inequalities and cultural attitudes to mental health, expert says

• ‘Stark disparities’: why black mothers are more at risk of perinatal mental illness in England

Black mothers are over twice as likely to be admitted to hospital with perinatal mental illnesses than their white counterparts, a Guardian analysis of NHS figures shows, with the racial disparity being described as “horrifying”.

There were 777 admissions to NHS England hospitals of people with a primary diagnosis for puerperal mental disorders – occurring in the six weeks after childbirth – between 2020 and 2023. Of these, black women made up 12%, despite accounting for only 5% of deliveries in the same period. They were also more than twice as likely to be admitted to hospital than their white counterparts, according to the analysis.

Exclusive: the human rights lawyer, temporarily released from jail on medical grounds, describes her love for her family, and why she keeps going despite brutal treatment at the hands of the regime

Iran’s Qarchak jail has been called many things: a torture chamber; the worst women’s prison in the world; unfit for humans. Nasrin Sotoudeh uses just one word to describe the nine months she spent there: “Hell.”

Sotoudeh does not speak of the appalling conditions or stench of sewage, the undrinkable water or lack of food, the disease or cruelty of solitary confinement. She simply says: “I am ready to return whenever they say.”

Our national style is ‘not too polished’, apparently, and ‘a little bit undone’. Can we be a bit more specific?

Chioma Nnadi, who has taken over at British Vogue , says she has settled back in seamlessly after 20 years out of the UK. “I realised just how much growing up in London shaped me,” she told a Vogue Club podcast . “I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about this idea of British girl energy; it’s just an irreverence, kind of a cheekiness, it’s not too polished, and it’s a little bit undone …”

British girl energy, eh? I love this: time for us to claim our own style identity, like the French or the Scandinavians ; something to be spoken of in vague, reverent generalities. This could be our new Cool Britannia moment, without the Gallagher brothers ruining everything. But what is BGE, beyond Nnadi’s idea of cheekiness and lack of polish?

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

From lactating Madonnas to disembodied orbs, a new exhibition surveys the depictions of breasts and asks – what about the women who own them?

Breasts have been a focus in the culture wars of the last 50-odd years. Second-wave feminists casting off their bras in the 1970s come to mind, and then ongoing judgment-filled debates around breastfeeding, and the even more fraught, and recent, hostilities around trans healthcare. Recent celebrations of female sensuality manifested in things like #freethenip, hot girl summer, widening conversations around sexual pleasure, and the body positivity movement all take breasts as a key motif, too.

But for all the girlies freeing their nips on Instagram, it’s much rarer to see them free on the street. We keep them under wraps and rarely articulate why they seem to be so contentious. The potency of breasts as symbols of things as disparate but overlapping as gender, eroticism and motherhood makes them the nexus of a wild cocktail of emotions, politics and desires.

Pierrette is beset with troubles, from a robbery to a house flood and more, but the neorealist drama comes with solidarity and surprising humour

The simple image of pushing a seam through a sewing machine becomes a profound life statement in Rosine Mbakam’s debut feature, which is focused on talented clothier Pierrette (played by the director’s cousin Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat) in the Cameroonian city Douala. It’s emblematic of the need to keep moving forward in daily life – and to come out the other side smiling, with stoicism and resilience. As one customer puts it: “I’m getting by. That’s life. When you fall down, you get up again.”

Pierrette is having, it has to be said, an especially rough day. A single mother also caring for an elderly parent (Marguerite Mbakop), she is already scraping for cash. Regularly bartered into submission by her clientele, she always holds her gaze bashfully downwards – either out of anger, or embarrassment at having to assert herself. When she takes a motorcycle taxi after work, robbers relieve her of all her savings, disastrously just as the new school year is beginning. Meanwhile her home is flooded, endangering the clothes she is preparing and leaving her wondering how she will escape this soggy calvary.

The WTA finals host revealed its commitment to women’s rights by jailing a female activist

If a record of sexual apartheid is not the ideal look for a nation that must still, occasionally, placate progressives, news of an extreme example – the lengthy imprisonment of Manahel al-Otaibi , a 29-year-old fitness instructor and women’s rights activist – has at least arrived too late to tarnish Saudi Arabia’s latest sporting triumph: buying up the Women’s Tennis Association finals.

In fact, given that country’s hectic promotional schedule, there could hardly have been a more convenient time for human rights organisations to report, as they did last week, that al-Otaibi whose circumstances were for months unknown, is serving 11 years in prison for the “terrorist” offences of wearing “indecent clothes” (ie, not an abaya) and supporting women’s rights. Her sister, Fouz al-Otaibi, fled the country in 2022 to avoid similar persecution. Fouz tweeted last week : “Why have my rights become terrorism, and why is the world silent?”

Rihanna’s rocking sneakers and you should too! Here’s a look at the shapes and styles of the moment.

Only women can rid the club of the guardians of the Y-chromosome’s ‘we’ve always done it this way’ misogyny

Here’s a surprise: the Garrick Club is a really lovely place.

It’s full of lively and fascinating people. The staff are superb, the food is great, the wine list divine. The library is to die for (or in), we have the finest theatrical portraiture in the world, sumptuous sitting rooms and chic bedrooms a wallet’s throw from the Royal Opera House.