US president-elect Donald Trump. Credits: Reuters
New York: Mothers in US are teaching their children about sexual consent and assault following president-elect Donald Trump‘s boasts about groping women, according to research published on Tuesday.
Roughly two in five US women think that women are more likely to feel unsafe and men more likely to feel entitled to treat women as sexual objects since Trump was voted into office on November. 8, the poll by Perry Undem, a nonpartisan Washington-based research firm, showed.
The Republican billionaire businessman is due to be sworn into office on Friday amid heavy criticism over his attitudes towards women, much of it stemming from a 2005 tape in which he brags about groping women and making unwanted sexual advances.
As a result of his election, 50% of women, and 35% of men, who are parents, say they are teaching their children about consent or sexual assault issues, the polling showed.
Trump also opposes abortion rights, wants to pull government funding from hundreds of women’s health care clinics and repeal a national insurance programme that pays for most birth control methods for women.
More than a third of women said they are feeling less tolerant of sexism in their own lives as a result of Trump‘s victory, the polling said.
Release of the research comes just days before hundreds of thousands of women are expected to flood the nation’s capital for a Women’s March on Washington on Saturday, designed as a show of unity for women’s rights.
Hundreds of sister marches are planned for elsewhere in the US and around the world.
According to the polling, a majority found Trump‘s comments on the 2005 tape about grabbing women’s genitalia unacceptable and consider the behaviour to be sexual assault.
However, among men in the Republican Party, which now controls both houses of the US Congress, two-thirds said they were not upset by the comments.
A third of the Republican men said they think men generally make better political leaders than women do, it found.
Perry Undem surveyed 1,302 adults online and by telephone December 9 through December 27, 2016. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
(Reuters)