Of all the social constructs impacting the contemporary world, gender is perhaps the most pervasive and the most insidious. Its inequities creep into our everyday lives with impunity. Across the globe, gender construction has evoked challenge, undergone reform and, in some instances, transformed thinking in societies. Yet, for all the gains made by the international community and all the rights women have managed to claim, there is lingering paralysis in societal efforts to close the gender gap and view women's rights as human rights. Even more disturbing is the fact that the academy, despite its reservoir of intellectual potential to create space for feminist transformations, proceeds at a visibly lethargic pace towards this end. Research on gender inequity has consistently focused on variations in income, employment opportunities, and other resources between men and women. But little attention has been paid to those societal forces that sustain gendered inequity, namely policy initiatives, economic realities, and legal constraints, which further complicate gender at the intersections of race, class and culture. And, in the academy, given the male-dominated nature of some disciplines (e.g. political science) gendered inequities are easily incubated and surface with increasing regularity. This study examines the political, economic and legal influences that exacerbate gender inequalities and offer practical recommendations for un-gendering society and the academy.