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.
