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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 02/03
The Sky Is Falling : Market Reforms and the Re-Emergence of Discrimination Against Women in China
Molly Padgett-Cross
December 2000
Abstract
Post-Mao China is a country of contentious debate. 1978 market reforms ushered in an astounding improvement in domestic living standards and secured the role of the People's Republic of China in international trade. With a post-1978 average of 7% increase in GDP year-on-year, the country claims growth more than three times the global average. Continued reforms and their resulting economic improvement leave no doubt of government commitment to fuqiang (to be rich and powerful), as summed by Deng Xiaoping's oft-quoted sentiment, "To be rich is glorious." However, in the government's desire to maintain its legitimacy through expanding the private sector and maintaining impressive GDP growth, the state often neglects the welfare of individuals, particularly women.
Women had equality thrust upon them in 1949. A virtuous woman was no longer an untalented one as Mao forged his campaign for women's equality. This quickly became a prominent platform of the communist regime, as logically, equality for the masses could not be achieved without equality for women. These steps towards women's equality had one major drawback - women's equality became contingent upon the state for support and legitimacy. With a strong central government, this dependency raised no issue as women's status stayed secure. However, in 1978 the situation changed. In a swift backlash against the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), invasive to all fabrics of Chinese society, market reforms, initiated in 1978, sought to reverse widespread government interference in the economy, which was in dismal straits. As the post-Mao regime began state withdrawal from the economy, women's status, too, began to slide. A look at statistics leaves no doubt: women's equality in employment, education, and politics has eroded.
Reforms have broadened employment opportunities for Chinese; however, most high-level opportunities are designated to males. A common explanation is that women do not have the same level of education nor expertise - which is true, to some extent. However, employment is also influenced by conventional attitudes of women's weaker work ethics - a male is "sure" to devote himself entirely to the company, whereas a female must divide her time between work and home. Economics also play into hiring - employers do not have to provide maternity benefits or childcare for male employees. Says one enterprise manager, "We would rather take in a male hoodlum than a woman. A hoodlum can be reformed, but you cannot get a woman to give up child-bearing." (Rai, 1992, 34)
Educational opportunities are limited to women in light of the new market economy. The government contributes an abysmal amount of funding towards education, which has caused education to be privatized to a large degree. "Public" schools often charge yearly fees to their students to pay teacher's salaries and help maintain their facilities. This has an especially negative impact in rural areas on women, as families must decide which children they can afford to send to school, with the first choice inevitably their sons. In fact, 75% of children not enrolled in school are girls (Riskin 1999). 182 million Chinese over the age of 15 are illiterate or semiliterate: 70% of these illiterates are women (Women in China, 1997). In extremely poor areas almost no girls attend school and will probably never be literate (Riskin 1999).
It is women's role in government and politics that provides the most salient analysis of women's status in China. Women's political participation succinctly measures the equality of women within the party, and their indirect reach on the lives and work of Chinese women. Governmental participation is a broader measure of the status of women in China.
Market reforms have prompted the reemergence of traditional "feudal" attitudes regarding women. Many believe women's job is to "procreate" rather than participate in politics (or the labor force) (Chinese Law and Government l993 vol. 26 (5)). Furthermore, many of these detractors believe that women have retreated from the political arena willingly with the advent of market reforms. Others also cite the reforms - but as an incentive for women to seek more profitable employment.
The plight of women's equality does receive increasing attention in China. This is in large part due to what could be called a burgeoning "state-monitored" public sphere, where discussion of women's issues brings attention to growing problems without compromising the legitimacy of the state. Women's organizations and NGO's in China allow individuals to interact, and come to general conclusions about various social issues. These discussions produce what can be considered public space - issues that are debated separate from the state.
After the first onslaught of market reforms, and the ensuing effects on women, a movement for gender studies ensued. Women previously had a vocal outlet linked through various women's groups in their communes, but these groups dissolved with the disappearance of communes, leaving women little opportunity to convene en masse to support their interests (Rai 1992). Responding to this deficit of women's groups, many prominent universities have formed women's studies research or academic departments to track the status of women. These departments, though ultimately bound to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, have considerable autonomy in their research. The party's legitimacy is steeped in protecting/liberating the masses, and must condone research to assess women's status in politics, education, and labor. This aspect of government legitimacy is closely intertwined in the state's other major legitimator - the booming economy. As such, these research groups tread a fine line between disturbing economic growth and conducting research to "liberate" the masses.
Market reforms opened the floodgates for the reemergence of discrimination against women in China. Women's equality, tenuous at best during Mao's regime, has teetered and fallen in the Post-Mao Era. Because women's equality did not evolve, rather came to be in 1949, there is no basis of general support to provide women equal access to employment, education, and politics. Attention begins to center on discrimination as the situation worsens, the first step towards improvement. However, if steps are not taken to reintroduce women into the workplace and politics, and provide them with opportunities for education, much time will pass before we see the improvement of women's status in China.
