The long road to equality for
Chinese women By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - "Women hold up half the sky,"
said Mao Zedong. And indeed, they now account for
45% of China's workforce and 40% of positions in
government. So the Chinese leadership was within
its rights last week to boast of the progress
women have made under Communist Party rule. What
officials don't say, however, is that there is
still a long way to go for Chinese women, and the
road to equality remains blocked at key points.
It came as no surprise that one of China's
many female success
stories - All-China Women's
Federation vice president Huang Qingyi - was
selected to deliver the good news. As of 2005, 241
women held official positions at the ministerial
and provincial levels, Huang said, urging other
countries to emulate the Chinese model of
advancement for women.
"We have nine
female state leaders now," she said, "compared
with five in 2001. It reflects the progress in
women's participation and influence in the
country's political affairs."
No women
serve, however, on the powerful nine-member
Standing Committee of the Politburo.
Vice
Premier Wu Yi, who is in Washington this week
negotiating the politically fraught complexities
of the US-China trade relationship with US
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, tops the list of
female stars. Below Wu, who is also a member of
the 24-member Politburo, are three vice chairwomen
of the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress (NPC) - He Luli, Gu Xiulian and Uyunqing
- and State Councilor Chen Zhili.
In
March, the NPC, the country's highest legislative
body, struck a blow to narrow the gender gap
further with a pledge to fill at least 22% of its
roughly 3,000 seats with women when it convenes
again next year.
Outside the corridors of
power, it is also clear that China's extraordinary
economic growth has given greater freedom and
power to working women in urban areas. A glance at
China's booming magazine market reveals the rising
influence of women in cities. Many of these
publications target women by offering tips on
beauty, fashion and sex.
For journalistic
merit, such magazines score low. Thanks in good
part to increasing readership among working women,
however, the industry is now estimated by the
General Administration of Press and Publication to
be worth 17 billion yuan (about US$2.2 billion)
annually.
While Chinese "material girls"
may be as shallow as their Western counterparts,
their new economic power nevertheless goes to show
how far women have come under Communist Party
rule. In 1950, women accounted for 20% of family
income; today they put in more than 40%.
It is worth noting that when Mao founded
communist China in 1949 - declaring to the world,
"The Chinese people have stood up" - the ancient
practice of foot-binding was still in evidence
and, for the most part, women were seen only as
wives, mothers and concubines who had no legal
rights.
Mao outlawed foot-binding and in
1950 enacted marriage laws that legalized divorce
and banned bride sales and the keeping of
concubines. Mao's abolition of family property
also undercut centuries of feudal patriarchy.
Within three years of taking power, Mao
had radically altered the traditionally Confucian
family structure and - in theory - made women
equal to men. But the economic and social
upheavals of the Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution meant that theoretical
equality was about all women would get under Mao.
Still, the concept of equality, planted by
the communist revolution, took root and is now
clearly bearing fruit.
But the changing
attitudes that have accompanied the increasing
economic success of women have been predominantly
an urban phenomenon. And despite China's rapid
urbanization, nearly 60% of its 1.3 billion people
still live in the countryside, where poverty and
tradition thrive. With the Ministry of Commerce
reporting 90 million people under the poverty line
of $112 a year and another 50 million at risk of
falling below that line, talk of gender equality
can seem meaningless for a significant proportion
of the population.
In addition, a report
in the state-run China Daily last month on rising
illiteracy does not bode well for rural women.
Illiteracy has risen by 30 million over the past
five years, the report said, to 116 million. At
least in part, that is probably because girls from
poor families choose work over school to add to
the meager family income.
The widening gap
between the urban rich and the rural poor has
sparked social unrest in the countryside, with the
government reporting an alarming number of "mass
incidents" - the official euphemism for protests
that often turn violent - most of them occurring
in rural areas. There were 87,000 such incidents
reported in 2005, the last year for which the
Ministry of Public Security offers figures,
compared with 74,000 in 2004 and 58,000 in 2003.
Ironically, the Communist Party is once
again touting the values of the ultimate
patriarch, Confucius, in an attempt to restore
social harmony.
Even in cities, the new
freedom and power of Chinese women can be
illusory. Without any anti-discrimination laws in
place, women can have it rough in the urban
workplace. According to the All-China Women's
Federation, female migrant workers are paid less
than their male counterparts. On a higher
educational plane, a recent Ministry of Labor and
Social Security study showed that 80% of the
female university students surveyed had
experienced discrimination in their search for a
job.
An expanding urban sex industry and a
growing culture of mistresses show that material
advances for many women have come at the expense
of exploitation. At the same time, however, looser
divorce laws have made educated women with
purchasing power much less likely to put up with
unfaithful husbands.
Of course, the
greatest inequality for Chinese women has been the
one-child policy, adopted in 1979 to curb runaway
population growth and recently reaffirmed through
at least 2010. The policy has revealed that all
the Communist Party's egalitarian rhetoric about
women didn't make that much difference after all.
The traditional Confucian preference for
boys has combined with the modern technology of
ultrasound and the commonplace practice of
abortion to produce a ratio of 119 boys per 100
girls under age five. The ratio is as high as
130:100 in some regions.
This means that
the women who make up 45% of China's labor force
are, roughly speaking, about half the women in
China. That's pretty close to fulfilling Mao's
maxim of holding up half the sky.
And, in
yet another irony of Chinese life, the perverse
one-child policy that has disproportionately
reduced the number of females in the country may
ultimately empower them. It's getting harder and
harder to find a wife these days.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and
writer at Hong Kong International School. He can
be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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