Experts say women on death row can face harsher treatment than men, especially during the notorious ‘death watch’ period, with some warning that the process may inflict additional trauma on female prisoners.
Christa Gail Pike is scheduled to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, with her execution date now set for September 30, 2026.
She is being held on death row at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as the Tennessee Prison for Women, where she has remained since being convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Pike was 21 when she entered custody, making her the youngest person on death row at the time, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
She is also one of just 45 women on death row across the US. Recent data from the Death Penalty Information Center shows women make up roughly two percent of the nation’s death row population, a tiny share of the overall condemned population even as the total number of women facing execution has remained in the mid-40s nationwide.
Although that small number may not appear significant at first glance, specialists argue that women often encounter distinct and more severe hardships throughout the legal process and while awaiting execution. Scholars who study gender and capital punishment say women are frequently judged through a more gendered lens, and that prosecutors, judges, and prison systems are still overwhelmingly male-dominated.
Those issues can include gendered attacks in court, battles over access to basic menstrual supplies in prison, treatment by male correctional staff, and deeper isolation than many male inmates experience on death row.
Sandra Lynn Babcock, a law professor at Cornell University, explained per USA Today, that when it comes to the ‘death watch,’ process, things are less than ideal.
The term refers to the close monitoring of a prisoner in the final days before execution to prevent self-harm or suicide.
Babcock revealed that Pike’s death watch will be held in a male prison and ‘will be carried out by men and then the execution team is going to be comprised primarily of men, who will strap her down and kill her.’
She said that this creates a level of ‘torment’ that male prisoners do not generally face in the same way.
USA Today also reported that women have, in some cases, been subjected to slut-shaming during trials in efforts to influence perceptions of guilt, as well as strip searches while menstruating.
Pike’s attorneys have also pointed to the conditions of her confinement, saying she spent 27 years in circumstances that were effectively solitary.
According to her legal team, male death row prisoners had opportunities to attend religious services together, work, take classes, and share meals, while Pike remained isolated.
In a 2022 lawsuit against the state, her law team said it was punishment ‘based on the arbitrary fact that she is the only woman sentenced to death in Tennessee’.
“Ms. Pike has been subjected to solitary confinement in a cell the size of a parking space, where she has had nearly no meaningful human contact. These conditions have had a devastating impact on her mental and physical health,” they wrote. “The cumulative effect of this extreme punishment… has deprived Ms. Pike of basic constitutional guarantees of humane treatment.”
Her case has also drawn attention because of the traumatic background described by those seeking to stop her execution.
Reports say Pike experienced years of sexual abuse, rape, neglect, and at least one suicide attempt earlier in life.
It has also been alleged that she was raped a year before Slemmer’s murder, which prosecutors said was driven by jealousy over Pike’s belief that Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend.
A petition seeking to halt the execution argues that important mitigating evidence was never shown to jurors during the original trial. It states: ‘Christa Pike is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row for a crime committed when she was an 18-year-old girl with severe trauma and untreated mental illness.’
The Mercy For Christa page claims: “She is a victim of child sexual abuse, multiple rapes that began when she was a toddler, and parental abandonment and neglect. If her execution proceeds, Christa Pike will be the first woman put to death in the State of Tennessee in more than 200 years.”
More broadly, scholars who study women on death row say cases like Pike’s highlight how rare female death sentences remain in the United States, and how often they are tied to histories of abuse, mental illness, coercion, and prolonged isolation. They argue that the final days before execution can intensify those harms, particularly when a woman is separated from the small support structures that may exist on male death row units.
In Tennessee, Pike’s execution would also mark a striking historical milestone: the state has not executed a woman in the modern era, and her case has revived debate over whether death-row practices designed around male prisoners can be applied without additional cruelty to women.