EvaluatingEquality
A women-only job fair in Putian City of Fujian Province on February 16 LITTLE did Han Han realize his new film
Duckweed would thrust him into the maelstrom of a nationwide controversy, especially among young women, before it premiered on January 28, the Chinese Lunar New Year Day. The theme song, released before the premiere, lit up social media placing the famous writer, car racer and film director in decidedly hot water.
At the heart of the criticism was a complaint from Xu Xin, a 20-year-old actress who accused Han of discriminating against women in the song’s lyrics.
“When innocent boys hear the song they will be influenced and will very probably discriminate against women in their life,” said Xu. Before marrying me, you must know this:
Every day, you [the woman] must get up earlier than me, sleep later than me; you must cook good meals for me and keep good relations with my mother and my sisters.
These are some of the lyrics Han wrote for the song.“Nowadays, women do not need to place their hopes on men, or prove themselves based on the love from their husbands,” said Xu.
For Xu, Han’s message in the song is outdated. “Maybe decades ago, women might choose to keep silent when they came across such a song. But now, the idea of gender equality has been deeply rooted in people’s minds and many women are standing up and expressing their own ideas,” she said.
Without doubt gender equality has been widely recognized in China. According to a survey by Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, 94.1 percent of the respondents believe that women and men are playing equal roles in social development. Some even believe that women are playing bigger roles than men.
The Internet-related figures also indicate women’s rising social status. A total of 67 percent of the users of Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like microblogging website, are women, according to Weibo statistics. Figures from Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, show that women in China contributed to 70 percent of online sales in 2016.
“Though there are some cases that show gender inequality, it is true that women’s social status has been greatly improved over the past decades,” said Xu. “Women should learn to be independent.”
Legal backing
Thanks to the increase of people’s awareness of gender equality, women know how to protect their rights and interests when they come across discrimination and China has enacted laws and regulations to safeguard women’s rights.
Based on the provisions of the Constitution that women enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life, in political, economic, cultural and social, and family life, China set the gender equality its basic state policy in 1995.
Since then, great progress has been made in this regard, said Song Xiuyan, Vice President of the All-China Women’s Federation in a symposium on gender equality in Beijing in December last year.
Over the past 20 years, more than 20 laws and regulations related to the protection of women’s rights and interests have been enacted and revised, including the Marriage Law, Employment Promotion Law, Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women, and Special Regulations on the Labor Protection of Female Employees. In March 2016, the Anti-Domestic Violence Law became effective.
Putting the laws into practice has also made prominent progress. According to the Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China, a white paper issued by the State Council in September 2015, the gender gap in education has been markedly narrowed in China.
Women now enjoy better opportunities in junior middle school education and above. Statistics from the white paper show that in 2014, female students accounted for 46.7 percent and 50 percent, respectively, of the total enrolments in junior and senior middle schools, and in the institutions of higher learning, they accounted for 52.1 percent of undergraduate students, 51.6 percent of postgraduate students, and 36.9 percent of those studying for doctoral degrees.
Having received better education, women are playing bigger roles in the management of state and public affairs. According to the white paper, women deputies to the First Session of the 12th National People’s Congress in 2013 accounted for 23.4 percent, 2.4 percentage points higher than 20 years ago. In the same year, the female employees in central government agencies and their subsidiaries reached 47.8 percent (for more figures, see graphs).
COVER STORY
China’s Commitments to Promoting Gender Equality on the World Stage
At the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 27, 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the Chinese Government’s commitment to support the gender equality efforts worldwide from 2016-20, which include:
• Donating $10 million to United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women;
• Helping developing countries carry out 100 Health Projects for Women and Children and 100 Happy Campus Projects;
• Inviting 30,000 women from developing countries to attend training programs in China; and
• Providing 100,000 skills training opportunities in local communities of developing countries.
Obstacles in mind
Despite the progress shown in these figures, obstacles still exist when it comes to improving women’s social status, especially in their career development.
According to 2016 Women, Work and Happiness White Paper released by Lean in China, an online platform promoting gender equality and women’s career development, most women believed that the major challenges they face in their career development are: work-life balance (86.3 percent), career disruption due to child bearing (73.63 percent) and responsibility at home and supporting their husbands (70.42 percent). The white paper noted that 63.2 percent of married women took the main responsibility of child rearing.
“It’s easy to promote gender equality in real life through various measures such as policies and laws, but it is difficult to change the discrimination deep in people’s mind,” said Liu Li.
Liu, 40, had held a high-level position as a lecturer in a local university in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China’s Fujian Province, for 11 years. But just before the Chinese Lunar New Year, she resigned and found a job in a small company so that she could have more time to take care of her three-year-old son.
“I am well educated and can have a good job, thanks to the progress made in gender equality in the past years,” said Liu. “But I have the feeling that when I try to take care of my family, I cannot work well in my career, and vice versa.” 
Women deputies to the National People’s Congress in 2016Because of these family responsibilities Liu had lost several promotion opportunities. “In order to take care of a family, either the husband or the wife should sacrifice his or her career,” said Liu. “In most circumstances, it is the wife.”
Liu’s husband is also a teacher at the same university and was recently promoted to professor. “I am a traditional woman and I know I must quit my job in order to better take care of my son so that my husband can put more time into his work and make greater progress in his career,” said Liu. “I don’t know whether it is a kind of gender inequality, but I made the decision by myself.”
Because women take maternity leave after giving birth, many companies and institutions are reluctant to recruit women and even fire them for various fictitious reasons when they become pregnant.
In most parts of China, women can have at least 98 days of paid maternity leave. In Guangdong Province, the leave can be 178 days for natural labor and 208 days for Caesarean birth. These special measures for women stipulated by law have become the reason for some companies and institutions to find excuses to fire women employees.
“They do not want to shoulder extra costs and would rather hire men, who can work all year round,” said He Zhen, a lawyer of Beijing Zhicheng Legal Aid and Research Center for Migrant Workers. “This is against the law and women should collect evidence and sue related units once they encounter such discrimination.”
Starting January 1, 2016, China implemented the two-child policy, allowing a family to have two children. “In this context, more efforts should be made from both the government and social organizations to better safeguard women’s rights and interests,” He said.
He noted that both husband and wife should take equal responsibilities in raising their children, instead of putting the responsibility only on the wife. “We still have a long way to go to change people’s minds in this regard and realize gender equality in the real sense.”
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