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The Long and Winding March to Gender Equality in Mainland China


Fig.1. Source: ASPI - The Strategist. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/womens-rights-in-china-and-the-legacy-of-the-feminist-five/

Introduction


The latest available data on Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5), namely Gender Equality, shows that the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030 (UN Women, 2021). While the trend is global, the cultural, political, and economic factors shaping gender inequality in its many dimensions are specific to each country. 


The longest running index trying to capture the various inequalities at play is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index. It aggregates 146 countries’ gender gaps across economic opportunities, education, health, and political leadership to estimate a ranking in their overall performance (World Economic Forum, 2023). Since 2006, when the index was first published, China’s ranking position has been steadily decreasing from 63rd to 107th in 2023 (Figure 2). When looking at the different dimensions separately (Figure 3), it becomes clear that in absolute terms, China performs best in the health and survival subindexes, where it reached 93.7% parity in 2023. Due to the skewed sex ratios at birth, however, in relative terms, the performance is much weaker. 


A similarly good absolute score was reached for educational attainment (93.5% parity), where full parity was reached for tertiary education. In 45th position as of 2023, the economic dimension is that in which China ranks best, where it has closed 72.7% of the gender gap as an average of the sub-indicators on economic participation and opportunity. The weakest dimension in both absolute and relative terms is political empowerment, where only 11.4% parity was achieved last year. Underlying this figure is the meagre representation of women in the National People’s Congress (World Economic Forum, 2023).


To understand the underlying drivers of this trend, some of the factors influencing gender parity will be briefly delineated in the following sections.



Culture


Cultural traditions and social norms have a strong influence on societal behaviours and can thus help explain how gendered roles and expectations may influence the overall participation of women in public life. In Chinese intellectual traditions, including Confucianism, there is no kinship-neutral discursive category with which to refer to gender (L.-H. Rosenlee, 2023). Instead, etymologically, women in China are referred to as nü 女, meaning daughter or young maiden, or fu 婦, married woman. The same applies to men referred as nan 男, son, before becoming zhangfu 丈夫, married man. In the earliest dictionaries, the two concepts were defined synonymously, illustrating the evolutionary relation from one to the other concept (L.-H. Rosenlee, 2023).


Gender distinctions have been conceptualised through the spatial bipolar nei 內 - wai 外 (literally “inside” and “outside”), demarcating both the ritual and physical boundaries between women and men (L.-H. Rosenlee, 2023). Nei 內 refers to the domestic realm where a woman becomes socially recognisable through her role as a daughter, wife, and mother. While the non-familial roles of the woman are constrained through this conception, they have full authority over their own domain. Wai 外 symbolises the ‘non-familial’ realm, where a man can also gain social recognition through a non-kinship role, even if for both genders the nei 內 remains the basis on which the extra-familial realm is based. In contrast to the Western dualistic paradigm of private-public, the relation between the nei 內 and wai 外 is intrinsically relational and reciprocal. In addition, the gendered relation is intertwined with the relationally determined kinship hierarchy, which permits certain women to de facto transgress into the wai 外 as long as the formal representation of gender propriety is upheld. As the woman has no own rank, she is however constrained by the rank of her kins, whose status she also assumes (L.-H. Rosenlee, 2004, 2006). 


This background can help explain that while the Female Labour Participation Rate (FLPR) is not very high, China hosts 78 ‘self-made’ female billionaires, the highest number in any country (Wong & Zhou, 2022) as the interaction with age, generation, marriage, and class can create a favourable environment for women to rise in the wai外 through her kins. In the political realm, this can also explain the role of Mao’s wife Jiang Qing 江青 as one of the most powerful women in the People’s Republic of China to date (Dragani, 2010). 


Politics


From its rise to power in 1921 to recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) largely advocated for gender equality. The first law introduced in the People’s Republic of China in 1950 was the Marriage Law, which guaranteed women the freedom to marry and divorce. In 1954, the legal and social equality of women was enacted in the constitution. During the Mao era, women were required to work for the achievement of a communist nation. Under the slogan “women hold up half the sky,” coined by Mao during the cultural revolution, female labour force participation was state-sponsored as part of the party’s economic agenda (Wielink, 2019; Wong & Zhou, 2022). 


After Mao’s death, the strong state push for women’s empowerment was less pronounced but the booming economy ensured that the progress made in education and health was generally upheld (Wong & Zhou, 2022). Moreover, China remained committed to the promotion of gender equality. By hosting the 1995 World Conference on Women that adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the CCP demonstrated the importance that it attached to project a positive international image on this issue (Jiang & Zhou, 2024; United Nations, 2024). To this date, the Beijing Declaration remains the most progressive blueprint for advancing women’s rights (UN Women, 2023).


The most explicit intervention into women’s life regards family planning, through the One-Child policy introduced in 1980.  While the policy helped to increase investments in women’s education, it did not counter the cultural ‘son bias’, which has led to a pronounced female deficit of about 35 million, according to the 2020 population census (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2021). In addition, China’s birth and marriage rates have been falling in recent years, spurring reversed policy measures. Besides abandoning the One-Child policy in 2016 and encouraging three children since 2021, the CCP also made the divorcing process more difficult through a 2021 law requiring a mandatory one-month ’cooling-off’ period to reconsider the decision (Du, 2018; Wong & Zhou, 2022).


But who actually takes these policy decisions? When looking at the CCPs membership, the number of women stood at about 29 million in 2022, making up less than 30% of the overall members (Statista, 2022). Looking at the participation in the formal political organs, the share of women decreases at higher levels of powers. In the 14th National People’s Congress, women make up 26.5% (The National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, 2024). While over the course of the last seven decades eight women have made it to the Politburo, the now 25 member executive policymaking body,  the current Politburo is all male, thus breaking with a two-decade custom of including at least one female representative (Stevenson, 2022). The highest echelon of power, the seven-member Standing Committee, has never included a woman. While there are some gender quotas in place set between 20 to 30% at subnational and national level, their low bar and limited scope suggest they may codify the already existing status quo instead of providing an incentive for affirmative action (Jiang & Zhou, 2024). 


Economy


Changing social structures attributed to economic modernisation are often cited as primary factors in explaining different roles that women play in society. In terms of labour force participation, economists observe a U-shaped relationship between the FLPR and economic development: in agrarian societies, women often work in home workshop production (Tam, 2011). As the economy develops, employment opportunities shift from the home to the factory, where manufacturing activities are not in line with female social norms. In addition, an inverted U-shape is observed between population growth and economic development, thus making fertility highest at middle-income levels, which consumes time for women who would otherwise spend it seeking formal employment. As the economy transitions to the service sector and fertility decreases at higher income levels, the FLPR rises again (Tam, 2011). 


In China, both the FLPR and fertility rate have been in decline over the past three decades. The FLPR has been on a downward trend since the onset of the market reforms in the 1980s. In particular, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises led to the layoff of low-skilled, often female labour. The rise of private enterprises has at the same time represented an opportunity for skilled women to climb the corporate ladder. The number of women presidents in China’s listed companies has more than tripled in the last decade (Yu, 2023). However, as China’s GDP per capita in 2022 ($12,720, according to World Bank Data, 2022) is quickly approaching the World Bank’s High Income Country threshold ($13,846, as set in World Bank Data, 2022), the stabilisation of the FLPR at around 70% of women aged between 15 and 64 is increasingly worrying (see Figure 4). In terms of fertility, Figure 5 appears to match the hump shape in Figure 4. From a peak in the 1960s, fertility is shown to decline even before the introduction of the One-Child policy.




Looking at what lies behind the data, it becomes clear that women in China face a trade-off between career goals and family obligations that are difficult to reconcile. The heightened political and social pressure to prioritise childcare coupled with a lack of public investments dedicated to supporting facilities as day care centres make women increasingly unable to balance the two areas of life. Instead, becoming a mother is often synonymous with quitting their jobs. In turn, the anticipation of this career break contributes to a persistent wage gap between men and women (Yu, 2023).


Conclusion


This brief snapshot illustrates some of the most important factors contributing to the opportunities and challenges faced by women in China. Across differences in age, generation, marital status, and social class, the last two decades have seen stagnation and even decline in some of the indicators for gender parity. While it is generally acknowledged that women’s empowerment does not follow a linear trajectory, Chinese women should not be left behind in a country quickly approaching high-income status.


In the current situation where policies and social discourses are reverting back to women’s domestic role, the reconciliation of this with the high levels of female educational achievements and economic opportunities open to them is becoming more difficult. Should women be forced to choose between their domestic and professional role, society as a whole will be worse off.  


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Agnes Monti is a young professional working in development cooperation. Her main interests lie in the analysis of changes and prospects for development policy in a multipolar decarbonising world in which China is an important player. She has a background in International Relations, Development Studies, and Political Economy.


This article was edited by Juan N. García-Nieto and René Neumann.


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