the so-called “War on Drugs”. While there is no globally uniform representation among female prisoners in terms of the types of crimes they are imprisoned for, it is widely acknowledged that there are a number of underlying social inequities which make affected women disproportionately more likely to commit crimes and therefore become incarcerated. The most prominent of these conditions is that of poverty, as well as the conditions that give rise to poverty. Globally, women in poor households tend to bear a disproportionate amount of work in regard to caring for the household, feeding the family, and educating the children. This is in tandem with educational inequalities, pay gaps, pregnancy, and heightened rates of physical and domestic abuses. Another inequity deemed partially culpable for the rate at which impoverished women, in particular, are incarcerated due to the lack of access to mental health care. Many incarcerated women suffer from mental illnesses, and their incarceration can be directly linked to an absence of treatment for their conditions. Research has shown a significant link between females in prison and brain injury, which supports research that shows incarcerated females are overwhelmingly victims of domestic violence (aka male violence against women). Prison conditions Early facilities were considered inhumane with little regard for health and safety. Men and women were housed in a large room where the strong preyed on the weak. As of 1964, in most of the Western world, the guards in female prisons are no longer exclusively female. As of that year, both men and women work as guards in women's prisons in the United States. However, some states have laws requiring female officers as well as a female superintendent. While most states have only one or two institutions for women, some facilities are considered "unisex" and house both male and female inmates in separate areas. There is massive variation in the quality of living standards both between prisons around the world and between prisons within individual countries. Variations in national wealth, apportionment of national budgets and different approaches to criminal rehabilitation all contribute to the absence of uniformity in prison living standards. Other phenomena, such as the privatization of prisons in many countries with large prison populations, such as the United States, also give rise to variability in the environmental quality of women's prisons. Once a corporation assumes governance over prison and its budget, the presiding government has relatively little oversight