Gender Inequality in Marriage and Family Sphere: Forms of Manifestation and Options for Coping with it

Gender inequality in the marriage and family sphere is most pronounced in the different attitudes of men and women to marriage registration, because it is men who, as a rule, prefer common-law marriage, and women are forced to put up with a model of relationships outside of the marriage, which deprives her of the rights provided for legitimate spouses. The analysis of the negative consequences of this problem allowed us to propose the following. It is necessary to legislatively fix the legal consequences of a long-term cohabitation of a man and a woman for those cases when, due to the death of one of the actual spouses, the marriage cannot be registered, which will contribute to the protection of the rights and interests of the other spouse. One more form of gender inequality is the practice when, in the vast majority of cases, a marriage is dissolved and the child remains in the care of the mother. This may adversely affects the psycho-emotional state of fathers deprived of the opportunity to live with their child, and children who wanted to live with the father, and not with the mother. It is necessary to form a stable judicial position based on the unconditional equality of the rights of the child’s parents, which is why decisions on such cases should be made following a comprehensive study of all the circumstances that testify in favor of both the mother and the father. One more form of gender inequality is a violation of women’s rights. Many fathers evade the payment of alimony for the maintenance of children, which is why the mother is entrusted not only with the upbringing of the child, taking care of his health, education, development, but also with the duty of his property maintenance, the burden of which she bears alone.

The results of the analysis make it possible to conclude that all these forms of gender inequality in marriage and family sphere should be investigated by not only legal science, but also psychology and sociology. It is vital as they have deep psychological, emotional and cognitive foundations that form differently in the minds of men and women and manifest themselves in different ways in their behavior.

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