Being a Woman in China Today: A Demography of Gender

Abstract

In China as in many other countries, inequalities remain between women and men in areas as varied as access to health care, education, and employment, wages, political representation, representation of assets and, in private life, decision-making within the couple and the family and sharing of domestic tasks. The aim of this chapter is to draw up a socio-demographic inventory of the situation of Chinese women in the early twenty-first century context of demographic, economic and social transition, and to draw attention to the paradoxical effects of these transitions, whilst taking into account the diverse realities that women are experiencing. The chapter is based mainly on the partial results of three surveys on the social status of women carried out jointly by the All China Women’s Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics in 1990, 2000 and 2010. These surveys paint a wide-ranging picture of the social realities experienced by Chinese women over the last two decades. The chapter concludes that in many respects, Chinese women do not have the same opportunities for social achievement as men and remain largely invested in roles that have a lesser social value than those of men. Different roles and spheres of influence, still clearly identified, continue to be attributed to men and women.

Conclusion

Chinese women do not, as famously formulated by Mao, hold up “half the sky”. Their rights and interests are nevertheless increasingly protected by law, and the fight for gender equality regularly brings new victories. However, the recent social changes are extremely complex. The highly gendered roles that still exist within the couple in China are part of a continuum of inequality between the sexes that continues throughout life. From this point of view, demographic trends, which are closely dependent on the prevailing family and social norms, shed special light on the situation of Chinese women. While Chinese girls are studying longer at school — almost as long as boys among the younger generations — the persistence of deeply entrenched gendered roles in the workplace and family life continues to limit their autonomy and contributes to the social reproduction of gender inequality. This is particularly obvious in the early stages of life, as sons are still preferred over daughters in many families, as demonstrated by Li, Jiang and Feldman’s chapter in this book.

The disengagement of the state in key areas such as employment, social security, education, and health leaves families to fend for themselves and exacerbates socioeconomic inequalities. The population, more vulnerable as a whole, is obliged to develop new strategies for meeting its own needs and getting the best out of the transformations that are taking place. At the same time, while Chinese legislation remains among the most advanced in the developing world with regard to promoting gender equality, and while there are many initiatives in favour of women, society only gives them relative autonomy, limited in particular by their lesser access to resources (notably educational, financial, and inherited assets) in comparison to men.

In many respects, Chinese women do not have the same opportunities for social achievement as men and remain largely invested in roles that have a lesser social value than those of men. The roles and spheres of influence attributed to men and women thus remain clearly differentiated. But China is not really a textbook case. Indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the question of women and equality between the sexes remains a priority on the international political agenda, and with good reason. Rare are the countries (does one even exist?) that offer conditions of perfect equality between women and men in areas as varied as access to health care, education, and employment, wages, political representation, representation of assets or, in private life, family decision-making and the division of domestic tasks.