Title: 4.6 Reducing Gender Inequality – Social Problems
Headings: 4.6 Reducing Gender Inequality
4.6 Reducing Gender Inequality
Learning Objectives
Reducing Rape and Sexual Assault
Key Takeaways
References

Content: Increase funding of rape-crisis centers and other services for girls and women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted. Increase government funding of high-quality day-care options to enable parents, and especially mothers, to work outside the home if they so desire, and to do so without fear that their finances or their children’s well-being will be compromised. Increase mentorship and other efforts to boost the number of women in traditionally male occupations and in positions of political leadership. As we consider how best to reduce gender inequality, the impact of the contemporary women’s movement must be neither forgotten nor underestimated. Since it began in the late 1960s, the women’s movement has generated important advances for women in almost every sphere of life. Brave women (and some men) challenged the status quo by calling attention to gender inequality in the workplace, education, and elsewhere, and they brought rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence into the national consciousness. For gender inequality to continue to be reduced, it is essential that a strong women’s movement continue to remind us of the sexism that still persists in American society and the rest of the world. Reducing Rape and Sexual Assault
As we have seen, gender inequality also manifests itself in the form of violence against women. A sociological perspective tells us that cultural myths and economic and gender inequality help lead to rape, and that the rape problem goes far beyond a few psychopathic men who rape women. A sociological perspective thus tells us that our society cannot just stop at doing something about these men.