Sexual Assault

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1.Research Question: How are sexual assaults influenced by gender inequalities ?
2. Social Importance: This question is important because the government is reacting to a series of publicized sexual assaults including rapes on colleges campuses. In the article I read in The New York Times the government has created a task force whom have set guidelines. The report that contains the guidelines emphasizes the confidentiality of sexual assault reports because sometimes if a victim feels that report will become public they will not fill a report and the perpetrator will never be caught. The task force has also found that many adult prevention training efforts weren't helpful, it recommends that instead of prevention training that there be programs in place that train bystanders how to intervene.
3. Literature Review: To help answer my research question I selected these two books:
3a. Summary: Marshall has searched for causes of sexual aggression in which he examined many factors such as social and cultural variables. The role that social customs play in our society have received a lot of attention due to the various hypotheses presented about the relationship between social interaction and sexual aggression. Studies show that societies in which rape is common have social factors that are prominent and unique. Some these cultures are characterized by patrilocality, the women is required to reside with the groom’s family and not her own, as well as high levels of feuding. Some social customs include raiding other places for wives, the use of physical violence to attain land, the idea of male toughness and female inferiority, general negative outlook on women, and war. Some of these characteristics appear in modern society, for example...

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...n focuses more on the male side and what they do wrong, how we live in a patriarchal society where it is expected of men to be better and keep their power over women. My conversation with the women supports both these points. The male in the situation was just as Hagan describes, the women was not equal as the man at the work place and he thought that he could dominate her because he was more powerful then her. It also supports Marshall’s point that the women was only a secretary and didn’t pursue an administrative job, she let her self be inferior whether she realized it or not.
7. Conclusion: I find that both men and women are at fault when it comes to sexual assault. Men shouldn’t dominate and overpower women considering they were born from a women’s body, and women shouldn’t let themselves be dominated; they should pursuer those high paying administrative jobs.

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