Push for gender equality to help women trailing in rush to prosperity

The media will, as usual, heap praise on the country's achievements in enhancing women's rights on International Women's Day today.

But experts warn that those at grass-roots level have been left behind as the country prospers.

The plight of young women migrant workers and rural women whose land is redistributed to male members by village chiefs deserves particular attention from government and society, the experts said at a Peking University forum organised by Half the Sky Public Education, an NGO founded in Hong Kong.

'Three big mountains stand in front of Chinese female workers today: pressure on the production line, pressure from a paternalistic tradition, and the hukou [household registration] system,' said Choi Suet-wah, chief co-ordinator of The Chinese Working Women Network.

Women form at least half of the migrant population, and up to 60 per cent in manufacturing hubs such as Guangdong. But unlike the first generation of migrant workers - who made money for a few years then returned to their villages to marry - young women workers today want to stay in the cities. The research shows they are doubly frustrated.

'On the one hand, female workers still feel the social pressure to get married when they reach their 20s,' said anthropologist Pun Ngai of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 'On the other hand, they despair that the money they make is not enough for them to settle in the cities.'

The country was shocked last year by the suicides of 19 workers at factories of electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Pun's research showed more than half of Foxconn's 900,000 workers were women, almost all aged 18 to 25 but including many illegal student interns as young as 16.