Full text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014 (8)

On Women and Children's Rights

The U.S. disregarded the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the U.S., women's susceptibility to poverty, workplace discrimination, domestic violence and sex harassment was worrying. The children's rights to life and health were threatened under the pall of school violence, sex molestation, gun violence, and hazardous work environment.

A large number of women and children lived in poverty. According to statistics, about 42 million women (about one in three American women) and 28 million children lived in poverty or were right on the brink of it (www.time.com, January 13, 2014). One in 30 American children were homeless, and child homelessness increased in 31 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report released by the National Center on Family Homelessness (www.theguardian.com, November 17, 2014).

Women were faced with wage discrimination. Nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers were women, and these workers often got zero paid sick days. The average woman was paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that figure was much lower for African American and Latino women; African American women earned only 64 cents and Hispanic women only 55 cents for every dollar made by a white man (www.time.com, January 13, 2014). In virtually every job category, the average woman earned less than the average man. Even in those low-paid jobs that tend to be dominated by women, such as nurses, men earned more (www.thinkprogress.org, April 8, 2014).

Reports of female soldiers getting harassed were on the rise. In an average day in the U.S. military, at least 16 sexual assaults were reported. According to a RAND survey, 13,000 incidents of "unwanted sexual contact," went unreported during the 12 months ending September 30, 2014 (www.usatoday.com, November 7, 2014). According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Defense, there were a total of 5,983 incidents of sexual assaults in the fiscal year ending in September of 2014, up by over 8 percent from the fiscal year ending in 2013 (www.america.aljazeera.com, December 4, 2014). Some 62% of female victims said they faced repercussions for reporting assaults (www.bbc.com, December 5, 2014).

Domestic violence was prevalent. According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, the estimated number of domestic violence incidents per year was about 960,000. Women constituted 85 percent of victims of domestic violence. On average, 3 females were murdered by their partner each day, and 4 females and 3 children died each day as a result of abuse. Each year, 2.1 million American women were assaulted by men (www.statisticbrain.com, September 5, 2014). Since 2014, over 1,000 complaints concerning children in foster care being mistreated in California languished past the deadline for completing the investigations (The Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2014).

Issues of school gun violence and sexual harassment were grave. In the first six weeks of 2014 alone, there were 13 school shootings including one eight-day period in which there were four shootings in K-12 schools (www.everytown.org, February 5, 2014). On the afternoon of January 17, 2014, a boy and a girl, both aged 15, were shot in two school shootings in Philadelphia (Washington Daily News, January 18. 2014). Sex violence in American high schools was astonishing. According to a survey by the American Association of University Women, in a given school year, 58 percent of 7th-12th graders experienced sexual harassment. One in 5 high school girls said they had been sexually assaulted at school, and 1 in 8 high school girls said she had been raped. One expert said the survey had revealed the astounding pervasiveness of this problem (www.america.aljazeera.com, November 14, 2014). A culture of sex violence was casting a pall over American campus, but failed to be dealt with properly by any American higher learning institutions (The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2014).

Child laborers were engaged in dangerous works. American Labor Law allows juniors to work, as long as his or her parents consent and the work does not directly conflict with school hours. That means, it is perfectly legal for a 12-year-old to work 50 or 60 hours a week in tobacco fields. Based on interviews with 141 child tobacco workers, aged 7 to 17, in the country's four largest tobacco-producing states: North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, nearly three-quarters of children interviewed reported feeling sick - with nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, difficulty in breathing, or other serious symptoms while working in tobacco fields. Many of these symptoms were consistent with acute nicotine poisoning (www.politico.com, September 16, 2014). (mo