The United States does not have a good record in safeguarding the rights of women and children.

Women in the United States do not share equal rights and opportunities with men in politics. Despite the fact that women account for 51.1 percent of the U.S. population, they hold only 81or 15.1 percent of the 535 seats in the 109th U.S. Congress, including 14 or 14 percent of the 100 Senate seats and 67 or 15.4 percent of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Only eight (16 percent) of governors of 50 U.S. states are women. No women of color have ever been governor of a U.S. state. Just 14 of the mayors of America's largest 100 cities are women, accounting for 14 percent of the total. By November 2005, there were only 81 women serving in statewide executive office, 25.7 percent of the total 315 working posts. Of the 7,382 people serving in the state legislatures, 1,668 are women, accounting for 22.6 percent. A research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union showed the United States ranked 61st in terms of women's representation in national legislature or parliaments out of over 180 directly electing countries, down from the 58th in December 2003.

Women in the United States have a higher unemployment rate than men, and lower pay for the same work. A survey by the U.S. Census Bureau said the median earnings of women and men in 2004 were 31,223 and 40,798 U.S. dollars, respectively. The female-to-male earnings ratio was 77 percent. Yearly earnings of women business owners were only 49 percent of men counterparts. In 2004, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 24,249 charges of sex-based discrimination, and 4,512 charges of pregnancy-based discrimination.

Poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women. In 2004, 28.4 percent of households headed by single women were in poverty. More and more women and children became homeless. In the city of Pasadena, Southern California, the number of homeless women and children reached 701 in 2005, increasing by 42.7 percent over 2003 and accounting for 57.6 percent of the homeless population in the city. Homeless women and children became the largest homeless population, surpassing that of single men for the first time.

U.S. women often fall victim to domestic violence. Statistics from American Institute on Domestic Violence showed each year in the United States 5.3 million women are abused, and 1,232 women are killed by an intimate partner. A news report said one out of every three American women would fall under the influence of domestic violence in her life.

American women face high risks of sexual offense. The FBI reported in October 2005 that during 2004, approximately 94,635 females nationwide were victims of forcible rape, which means that 63.5 out of every 100,000 women suffered from forcible rape. This figure also represents an increase of 0.8 percent from 2003. Women are sexually harassed while at work. In 2004 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 13,136 charges of sexual harassment, with 84.9 percent of them filed by women.

According to an investigation by the Pentagon released on Dec. 23, 2005, up to 6 percent of the women at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies said they experienced sexual assault during the 2004-2005 school year, and about half or more said they were sexually harassed. In the Reserve Forces and National Guard units, 60 percent of women and 27 percent of men were sexually assaulted or harassed during their service. And 11 percent of women were raped.

The U.S. prisons saw a surging number of female prisoners who had received bad treatment. A report by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics on April 24, 2005 said by the end of June 30, 2004, the number of female prisoners reached 103,310, increasing by 2.9 percent from a year earlier. In 2004, female prisoners in federal and state prisons accounted for seven percent of the total, up 4 percent from 2003, or nearly twice the increase rate of male prisoners. Nearly 50 percent of female prisoners said they were sexually assaulted. A total of 8,210 allegations of sexual violence were reported in U.S. correctional facilities during 2004,and the correctional authorities substantiated nearly 2,100 incidents of sexual violence, with women accounting for the majority of victims. American children's living conditions are worrisome. In terms of the child poverty index, the United States ranked next to the last among 22 developed nations in the world. Statistics released by U.S. Census Bureau on Aug. 30, 2005 showed children accounted for nearly one third of the 37 million poverty population in the country. And 1.35 million U.S. children had experienced homelessness.

Among the population aged under 18, those who lived in poverty accounted for 30 percent of the total in Washington D.C., 27 percent in Mississippi and Louisiana, 26 percent in New Mexico, and 24 percent in West Virginia. In New Orleans, 40 percent of children in urban areas lived in poverty.

American children's health has seen a decline, and death rates of infants and juveniles are increasing. Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many got neither checkups nor vaccinations. The China Press based in New York City said in a report on May 5, 2005 that over the past 20 years researchers funded by the U.S. government had tested anti-HIV/AIDS medicine on hundreds of children living in welfare homes with no basic protection or supervision by any independent organization. This practice brought great harm to the health of the children, and some of them died during the treatment.

One third of children in the United States were born out of wedlock, and half of the children live in single-parent families. At present, four million U.S. children live with jobless parents, facing such problems as domestic violence, melancholia, and drug and alcoholic addiction.

American juveniles often fall victim to violent crimes. More and more students go to school with knives or other weapons. In 2005, the number of students found with knives and other weapons in Maryland schools was 2,845, a jump of 63 percent over the past five years. Virginia schools also reported 2,278 cases of confiscated weapons in 2003 to 2004. And Washington D.C. reported 148 weapon incidents from 2004 to 2005.

The Washington Post reported in a feature story in August 2005 that a survey of 325 Latino seventh- and eighth-graders from across Montgomery County discovered 12 percent of the 11-to-13-year-olds had carried a weapon such as a knife or a club (one percent had carried a gun); 38 percent had gotten into a physical fight; 27 percent had stayed home because they felt unsafe going outside; and 16 percent had been threatened or injured by someone with a weapon. Twenty percent had been involved in gang-related activities; 12 percent said they had been members of a gang.

Frequent on-campus violence incidents threatened the safety of 26.4 million U.S. students aged between 12 and 16. Statistics showed 12 juveniles died of firearm-related crime everyday in the United States. A report by The Los Angeles Times on March 4, 2005 said more than 70 percent of sixth-graders in Los Angeles had experienced or witnessed violence incidents, and this proportion reached as high as 90 percent in some areas.

The U.S. judicial protection for children's rights is far lower than international practice. A report released by the U.S. Department of Justice showed the number of juveniles behind bars in the United States reached 102,000 by the end of 2004. The United States is one of the few countries where a crime committed by a juvenile results in a life sentence without any possibility of parole. According to a Human Rights Watch report, 93 percent of youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of murder, and an estimated 26 percent were convicted of "felony murder." This means that anyone involved in the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death. About 9,700 inmates were serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they turned 18. At least 2,225 child offenders are serving life without parole sentences in U.S prisons, compared with a combined total of 12 in other countries; 16 percent of the child offenders were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes, and an estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. At present, the number of child offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States is three times of 15 years before. Child offenders often experienced abuse in prisons, and staff-on-inmate sexual assaults at correctional institutions for juveniles were almost 10 times more than in jails for adult offenders. The United States is one of the few countries that sentence child offenders to death. To date, six states in America still have no minimum age for death sentence.

In 2004, a total of 63 juveniles aged 17 or under were sentenced to death. At present, there are around 3,500 prisoners on death row in the United States, with 72 of them sentenced for crimes they committed before they turned 18.