Will China’s updated women’s rights law actually help women?

Legal changes to better protect women in China will work well in theory, not so well in reality, say observers
Amendments stir concerns the law is less about independence, more about traditional roles

Women and gender

Stella Chen

Published: 12:00pm, 5 Nov 2022

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Changes to a decades-old women’s protection law in China have introduced greater clarity on what constitutes sexual harassment in workplaces and schools, but experts say the revised law still lacks the teeth it needs to be effective.

China’s top legislative body on Sunday passed amendments to the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests, according to a statement from the National People’s Congress. The revised law will take effect in January.

While the original version already banned sexual harassment against women, the new amendments further clarify definitions of sexual harassment.

The updated law explicitly forbids sexually harassing a woman against her will by means of words, texts, images or physical acts. It also requires that authorities who receive reports of harassment must process the cases promptly and provide a formal written response to the complainant.

The changes come as discussion of sexual harassment in China expands. In August, a Beijing court dismissed a landmark #MeToo case filed by Zhou Xiaoxuan against a well-known CCTV host for allegedly sexually harassing her when she was an intern at the broadcaster in 2014.

Zhou Xiaoxuan, who had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against a Chinese TV host, hoped her case would encourage other victims of gender violence in a system with few options to pursue complaints. Photo: AP

Another high-profile lawsuit, which was filed in the United States, centred on Chinese tech billionaire Richard Liu Qiangdong. Last month Liu reached a settlement in a civil trial with a woman named Liu Jingyao, who alleged he raped her after a dinner with him and other guests in Minneapolis in 2018.

Chinese feminist activists hailed the settlement as a victory for the #MeToo movement, while others on Chinese social media mocked Liu Jingyao for accepting the settlement, calling her a gold-digger and accusing her of using the rape case as a honeytrap.

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China’s women’s protection law was first enacted in 1992 and then revised in 2005 and 2018.

The revised law is intended to clarify the responsibilities of government and its local departments in the protection of women’s rights and interests, Zang Tiewei, the spokesperson for the National People’s Congress, said last week.

The amendments will grant social security departments along with trade unions and women’s federations the right to regulate employers and protect female employees in the workplace, Zang said.

But He Xin, a Chinese law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said he would not count on the revised law to make much progress in the protection of women’s rights, adding that the amendments are more of an apparatus response to President Xi Jinping’s frequent mention of gender equality.

“The amendments give many generalised articles that can merely act as a principle for the gender equality agenda,” He said. “It is not as concrete as other laws that protect women, such as the Anti-domestic Violence Law in China, where it clearly states the detailed measures to protect women, like a restraining order etc, which makes it hard to operate in reality.”

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During his speech at the opening of the 20th party congress, Xi said he would be “committed to the fundamental national policy of gender equality”.

But for the first time in decades, no woman was elevated to the nation’s top decision-making body, the Politburo.

Zhou Yunyun, a political sociologist at the University of Oslo, saw some “impressive and positive changes” in the revised law, adding that the articles on preventing gender discrimination in workplaces and increasing maternal welfare do reflect women’s interests.

But Zhou also criticised the impractical and political nature of the amendments, saying they would work mainly in theory but not in social reality.

“Even though the new amendments have specified more concrete details to hold people accountable for protecting women’s interests, and included new aspects of gender inequalities to address, many of its articles still lack regulatory power and serve more as idealised principles and goals to aim for,” Zhou said.

The revised law also requires the media to be “objective” and “moderate” when it comes to reporting on women’s issues, and should avoid violating their personal rights and interests by “exaggerating facts and overstating them”.

Feng Yuan, the co-founder of Beijing Equality, an advocacy group for women’s rights and gender equality, questioned the supervision of media coverage, saying it could be a double-edged sword.

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“On the one hand, it protects women’s rights from being violated, but on the other hand, it also limits and even stigmatises the role of the media. Therefore, it also leads to further self-censorship among media professionals,” Feng said. “What is more regrettable is that an amendment deleted one article that states that women’s federations or related women’s groups can expose and criticise those who infringe on rights and interests of specific groups of women through media.”

According to the amended law, discrimination towards women should be diminished in all forms. The law prohibits non-medically necessary fetal sex determination and sex-selective termination of pregnancy. Under the law, medical institutions are required to respect the wishes of women when performing relevant medical activities.

The revised law includes employment security protections against gender discrimination. The changes clarify the obligations of employers regarding maternity protection for employees, and prohibit the restriction of a female employee’s promotions, rankings, and evaluations of professional and technical titles due to circumstances such as marriage, pregnancy, maternity leave and breastfeeding.

The amendments also address the issue of abduction, and trafficking and kidnapping of women, requiring that the relevant government departments promptly respond to such reports, and rescue and resettle abducted and kidnapped women.

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According to He, the revisions to the women’s protection law could potentially conflict with China’s continued push for family unity and women’s roles in traditional virtue.

“As [the party] thinks family is the most basic unit of the country, and that a harmonious family allows the society and country to be stable, the revised law will not be truly promoting the independence of women and encouraging women to fight against the patriarchal society,” He said.

“Because at the end of the day they want women to return to their traditional roles, as a mum and a wife at home.”