Gender discrimination is an important aspect of social inequality in the United States. Until this day, there has been no constitutional provision on equality between men and women. On September 18, 2000, with support of some NGOs, a dozen surviving " comfort women" brought a class action with a federal court in Washington D.C., demanding public apology and compensation from the Japanese government. The US government, however, issued a statement of interest in July 2001, calling for dismissal of the lawsuit on the ground that recruiting of "comfort women" by the Japanese army during the Second World War was a "sovereign act." The statement aroused protects from the US National Organization for Women, the Truth Council for World War II in Asia and other NGOs. This incident, in its own way, reflects current conditions in protection of women's human rights in the United States and America's official attitude towards women's rights demand.

Violence against women is a serious social problem in the United States. According to US official statistics, one American woman is beaten in every 15 seconds on average and some 700,000 cases of rape occur every year. According to the 121st edition of the American Census published on January 24, 2002, in 1998 about one million people were suspected of involvement in violence between spouses and between men and women as friends. In March 2001, Amnesty International USA issued a report after two years' investigation, saying that the human rights of female prison inmates in the United States are often fringed upon and that they often fall victim to sexual harassment or rape by prison guards. Seven states even do not have laws or legal provisions banning sexual relations between prison officials and female inmates.

Protection of American children's rights is far from being adequate. The United States is one of the only two countries that have not acceded to Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is one of the only five countries that execute juvenile offenders in violation of relevant international conventions. More juvenile offenders are executed in the United States than in any of the other four. In 25 states, the youngest age eligible for death sentence is set at 17; and 21 states set that age at 16 or do not impose an age limit at all. Besides, the United States is among the few countries where psychiatric and mentally retarded offenders could be executed. According to the Human Rights Watch, in the 1990s, nine juveniles were sentenced to death in the United States, and the number was greater than that reported by any of the other countries.

American children are susceptible to violence and poverty. According to a report published on November 28, 2001 by the US Violent Policy Center, analysis of the murder data released by FBI shows that from 1995 to 1999, 3,971 infants and juveniles aged one to 17 years were murdered in handgun homicides. The firearm homicide rate for American children was 16 times the figure for children in 25 other industrialized countries. Black children have the highest rate of handgun homicide victimization, seven times higher than that for white children. In April 2000, the US Fund for the Protection of the Child published a green paper on conditions of American children. It quotes the poverty statistics of the American government for 1999 as saying that more than 12 million children were living below the poverty line set by the federal government, accounting for one-sixth of the total number of children in the country. A report by the US Health and Public Service Department released at the beginning of 2001 says that 10 percent of the American children have mental health problems and that one out of every ten children and children in adolescence suffered from mental illnesses that are serious enough to hurt. Nevertheless, those able to receive treatment could not exceed one- fifth.

The problem of missing children is serious. Figures published by FBI in 2001 showed that in 1999, 750,000 children went missing, accounting for 90 percent of the total number of people who went missing in the year. To put it another way, an average of 2,100 children at 17 or younger went missing every day. Since the Missing Children Act was enacted in 1982, the number of children registered by police as missing has increased by 468 percent.

American children often fall prey to sexual abuse. According to a report published in September 2001 by a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania after three years' investigation, about 400,000 American children are streetwalkers or engage in various obscene activities for money near their schools. Children who have fled their homes or are homeless suffer most severely from sexual abuse. Sexual harassment against children by clergymen in the United States is serious. According to Newsweek published on February 26, 2002, the Boston archdiocese of the US Roman Catholic Church has over the past decade paid 1 billion US dollars in compensation in lawsuits of sexual harassment by its clergymen against children. About 80 Boston clergymen are suspected of having molested children sexually. One has been accused of sexually molested more than 100 children. This, the greatest scandal in the United States following the Enron case, has aroused nationwide attention to the problem that is also common among clergymen elsewhere and, as a result, a string of similar cases have been brought to light.