International Women’s Day: China’s gender-equality failings still hold back women and economic growth, Beijing told
- As more women in China opt to avoid marriage and childbirth, the demographic ramifications have prompted high-level vows to build a ‘birth-friendly society’
- Delegates at this week’s ‘two sessions’ parliamentary gatherings call for reproductive reforms and highlight problems that remain prevalent in China’s rural areas
Despite a famous dictum popularised decades ago by the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong – that “women hold up half the sky” – gender disparities continue to have an outsized impact in China, according to political advisers and researchers.
Chinese women still suffer from considerable disadvantages in areas ranging from career development to housework burdens, as highlighted by recent survey findings and proposals submitted at this week’s “two sessions” parliamentary meetings.
The issue was raised at a time when gender inequality has been increasingly cited among the reasons that young women are refusing to start families – a decision that has profound implications for China’s demographic transformation and is threatening growth prospects in the world’s second-largest economy.
China’s population fell for a second consecutive year in 2023, marriages hit a record low in 2022, and new births have plummeted to nearly half of what was seen in 2016.
Working women in the country are earning about 13 per cent less than their male peers – a gap that has remained largely unchanged over the past few years – a leading recruitment platform said on Wednesday in an annual report ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday.
Their average monthly salary is 8,958 yuan (US$1,250), compared with 10,289 yuan for men, according to a survey of more than 26,000 office workers from third-tier cities and above by job-recruitment platform Zhaopin.com.
Just 21.5 per cent of the surveyed women in January and February said they would “very likely” or “absolutely” get a promotion within one year, compared with more than a quarter of male respondents.
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Meanwhile, more than 70 per cent of working women spend in excess of two hours on housework every day, whereas fewer than half of men do so, the survey found.
Xia Jie, former vice-president of the All-China Women’s Federation and a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), called for equal job opportunities for women as China pledged this week to build a “birth-friendly society” to boost falling birth rates.
Some employers are still only recruiting men or showing a preference for men, while 60 per cent of the women with disrupted careers cited childbirth or childcare as the reason, she said.
Another glaring issue that has gone largely overlooked by the central government is that China’s retirement ages, which remain among the lowest in the world, are forcing women out of the workplace at a much faster rate than their male counterparts.
While men typically retire at age 60, the mandated retirement age for female office workers is 55, and for blue-collar female workers it is 50. Beijing said in 2022 that its long-mandated policy would be pushed back over the following years, but no timetable has been released.
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Regarding women’s decisions to have children, Wu Depei, another CPPCC delegate and a doctor from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, said there is “an urgent need” to formulate laws and regulations that boost fertility, including on the freezing of eggs, so women have more options.
China’s National Health Commission bans unmarried women from using assisted reproductive technologies, including egg freezing – a move widely accused of restricting single women’s reproductive rights.
Wu also said more financial support should be provided by the government.
“We hope more reproductive choices can be provided for older women and some cancer patients, and that their reproductive rights can be guaranteed,” she said.
The issue of women’s rights has remained a hot topic in Chinese society since the #MeToo movement began in the country in 2017 and pushed for accountability in sexual misconduct. But some say there has been little concrete improvement, resulting in more young and educated women being inclined to avoid marriage and childbirth.
In rural areas where about a third of the Chinese population live, women are losing their land-use rights once they divorce, remarry or are widowed, according to Jiang Shengnan, who is also a CPPCC delegate.
If a woman remains single after reaching a certain age, her plot of land may be forcibly taken back by her natal village committee, and if one loses her husband, the village only retains the land for their children and takes back that for the wife, she said in her proposal to the conference.
“Such discriminatory treatment is based on a patriarchal system that has been inherited for thousands of years,” she said, calling for reforms in the rural land system.
The gender gap has also been widening in China for decades, according to the Global Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum.
When the study was launched in 2006, China ranked 63rd out of 115 countries, and its position has since been on a declining trend, falling to 107th among 146 countries and regions last year.
The decline was primarily due to low parity in political empowerment and sex ratios at birth, according to the index.
According to last year’s report, only 4.2 per cent of ministers were women and 24.9 per cent were parliamentarians. And only 89 girls were born for every 100 boys, which is among the lowest levels in the world.
