Gender inequality in China

Until 1978 China was a socialist planned economy that promoted gender equalities as one of the key principles of societal organization. After it embarked on economic reforms, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s, gender inequalities in the labor markets of China increased. Gender inequality in the labor market emerged as a significant economic and social problem as market-oriented reforms unfolded in China.^[1]

In international terms, gender inequality in China is relatively low. In 2011 China ranked 35th on the United Nations Development Programme's Gender Inequality Index (GII) among 142 countries for which the index was calculated. Among the components of GII, in 2011 China’s maternal mortality ratio was 38 out of 100,000 live births; 54.8% of women (aged 25 and older) had completed secondary education or more, while the counterpart statistic for men was 70.4%; women's labor force participation rate was 67.4% compared to 79.7% for men; and women representatives constituted 21.3% of seats in national parliament.^[2]

Mao era and labor market equality by gender

In the era of the planned economy (1949-1978) or Mao Zedong era (1949-1976), via the strength of the communist party and the People’s government policy, Chinese women’s status changed from “family private person” of traditional society to a "social person", and Chinese women gained the same status in the legal sense as men.^[3]

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China enacted in 1954 expressly stated that women and men enjoy equal rights. In legal terms, China realized the ideal of equal pay for equal work for men and women.^[1] In order to achieve gender equality, the China's Communist Party and the People’s government undertook various measures to liberate women, and implemented the policy of equality and equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities for men and women.^[1]

However, in practice, there still existed gender inequality in pay in the workplace in this era.,^[4] owing to the occupational and industrial segregation by sex. For example, during the planned economy enterprises had typical occupational differentiation into two groups, i.e. the primary jobs and secondary jobs, and men were more likely to be allocated to do the primary jobs and women are more likely to be allocated to do the secondary jobs.^[1]

China's economic reforms and the emergence of gender inequality in labor market

Employment system reform was a major part of China's economic reforms.^[5] During the era of planned economy, China formed an employment system that was called “Tong Bao Tong Pei.” This system meant government-guaranteed employment, unified planning, unified hiring, and unified deployment by the government according to the planned system.^[5]

After the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, because of severe employment situation, China's Communist party and government promoted the reform of the employment system first before promoting of the comprehensive economic structural reform.^[5]

The reform of the employment system can be divided into three stages. In the first stage, from 1978 to 1991, the employment system reform was carried out within the overall framework of the planned economy system’s reform, the double-track system is a transitional form of employment system, and planned employment is still the main form of employment system; the second stage is from 1992 to 2001, in the second stage, further promote the market-oriented employment system reform, planned employment still occupy a certain position; the third stage is after 2001, in the third stage, it is to accelerate the reform of the market-oriented employment system, and active employment policy is the core of this stage employment system.^[5]

In China, redundancies occur in the context of economic restructuring rather than a short-term recession [Jieyu Liu, 2007]. Research on China’s economic reforms also suggests that the cost of restructuring has fallen upon women disproportionately [Summerfield 1994]. China market-oriented economic reforms undermined gender equality in the area of employment to a great extent. Then gender inequality in labor market existed in the free market system has also emerged in China.

Generally, that gender inequality in China labor market discrimination has the following characteristics:

1. Women have lower income levels
2. Women have a lower level of occupation
3. Women experience forced early retirement, which results in the problems of insecurity; and women have a higher proportion of laid-off.
4. There is the gender discrimination in hiring.^[1]

Earnings inequality

Since the reforms and increased openness of China, China’s gender wage income emerged structural differentiation. A survey of the status of Chinese women in 1990 found that the average monthly income of male workers in urban areas was 193.15 Yuan, while the average monthly income of female workers in urban areas was 149.60 Yuan, that is 77.4 percent of what men earn; Average annual income of rural men and women was 1,518 Yuan and 1,235 Yuan respectively, an income ratio is 81.4%.^[6] The survey of the status of Chinese women in 2000 showed that urban employed women’s average annual income was 7409.7 Yuan, which is 70.1 percent of men's income which indicated increasing of income gap by 7.4 percentage points. The average income of women in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery was 2368.7 Yuan in 2000, only 59.6% of men's income, which gap increased by 19.4 percentage points from 1990.^[7]

Occupational segregation

Two new trends in the labor market since the China’s economic reforms are the feminization of informal sector’s employment and the devaluation of female dominated occupations.^[8] The survey data relative to seven provinces and 11 cities show that, from 1985 to 2000, the degree of gender segregation in 44- 51 occupations increased. The number of professional occupations that were restricted for women was much larger than that of men. The degree of restriction of white-collar occupations for women was larger than that of blue-collar occupations. The degree of restriction in units outside the system for women was greater than that within the system.^[9] The data shows that female employee-dominated enterprises have lower wage levels. The rise of the share of women employees in the early 1990s in China's sales and service industries was associated with a downward trend in income; there was also an inverse relationship between the proportion of women and the average wage of employees.^[10]

Unemployment

During the State-owned Enterprise (SOE) reforms of the late 1990s, women were laid off in greater numbers compared to men.

The above data shows that Chinese women had higher unemployment rates in the 1990s. The reasons behind this phenomenon were that during their internal organization the companies tended to lay-off women. Specific reasons include that, first, the textile industry and other light industry were affected greatly by the enterprise reform and economic reform in the 1990s. In these industries, there were a higher proportion of women workers, resulting in greater lay offs of women workers.^[1]

Second, during reforms period, the enterprises began to cutback multiple social functions. When the enterprises began to lay off the workers, the workers who were doing the secondary jobs were first to be laid off and female workers occupied a high proportion in these secondary jobs. Third, viewing from the principles of the laid-off, enterprises needed to implement the requirements of the country to lay off workers, and they also needed to take care of the consumption level of internal employees. This situation affected the determination of retirement age or internal retirement age. Generally retirement age was determined by government, and internal retirement age was determined by enterprises themselves. When employees reached the retirement age or internal retirement age, these employees would retire. Retirement age for women is five years earlier than that for men, and the internal retirement age for women was even earlier than the age of retirement. Under this rule, the female workers were first to be laid off. Fourth, the enterprises that laid off a lot of workers were those collective enterprises that had poor performance and were difficult to survive in the market economy environment. These collective enterprises had absorbed a large number of urban women to employment in the era of the planned economy. Statistical data show that the proportion of women in the state-owned economic units was 34.2% in 1990, the proportion of men is 65.8% in 1990, the proportion of women in the urban collective industrial units was 54% in 1990, this proportion of men is 36% in 1990; proportion of women in the state-owned economic units is 36.1% in 1995, the proportion of men is 63.9% in 1995; the proportion of women in the urban collective industrial units is 53.1% in 1995, this proportion of men is 46.9% in 1990.^[1]

Discriminatory hiring practices

During market-oriented reforms, there was widespread evidence of employment discrimination in the hiring process.^[1] Gender discrimination in recruitment can be divided into explicit gender discrimination and hidden gender discrimination.^[1] Explicit gender discrimination refers to explicit restrictions on women in the recruitment process. Hidden gender discrimination does not clearly define the limitations on recruiting women, but in the actual decision-making stage the management will still implement preference for men or the male priority rules under the same conditions. Generally, there are three kinds of gender discrimination in the process of hiring in contemporary China. First, gender restrictions on career and posts; second, gender discrimination in the process of recruitment; third, age discrimination. For example, in the process of recruitment China's national civil units and national government departments and state-owned large and medium-sized enterprises do not comply with the national equality employment laws. This kind of discrimination is experienced mainly by women job-seekers over the age of 40. The age limit for men is more relaxed, usually is under 40 or 45 years of age, but for women age limit is mostly under the age of 30, or even under 25 years of age.^[1]

FDI and employment and gendered wages in urban China

Foreign direct investment in China has impacted China’s employment significantly. By the end of 2005, the employee number hired by foreign direct investment enterprises located in China urban regions had reached 1245 ten thousands. By the end of 2002, the employee number hired by foreign direct investment enterprises located in China rural regions had reached 650 ten thousands.^[11]

The FDI is mainly driven by motives of achieving low labor costs. A considerable number of foreign-invested enterprises are based in China's labor-intensive industries, such as the garment industry, electronics manufacturing, and food and beverage processing industry, etc., which brought significant employment effects.^[11]

Table below shows the contribution of foreign direct investment-generated employment to China's urban employment:^[11]

Table 2 shows that the number of employees hired by foreign direct investment enterprises located in China urban regions increased steadily from 1985 to 2005. The FDI has a more significant employment impact on women than on men. A lot of foreign direct investment enterprises hire women more than men, but the women are engaged in low-skilled jobs.^[12] For example, in Shenzhen city, the rural labor force from outside was 1.29 million in 1996, and it included 836,000 women, accounting for 68%. In all surveys, local government officers said that women in the local migrant workers accounted for 60 percent. The main reason was that a large number of foreign-funded enterprises were labor-intensive processing and assembling enterprises, mainly hiring young women, so that the young women concentrated in the Pearl River Delta. There were gender differences in the distribution of migrant workers in the enterprise ownership; more men in the Pearl River Delta went into the local private sector, whose ratio was 36.7%. More women workers concentrated in foreign-invested enterprises; this ratio was 62.1%.^[13]

The gendered wages in urban China have been affected by foreign direct investment (FDI), and this impact changed over time.^[14] The research based on the household survey data from 1995 and 2002 with province-level macro-data showed that FDI as a proportion of investment had a sizable and statistically significant positive effect on both female and male wages in 1995 and 2002. In 1995, women experienced larger gains from FDI employment than men, but those gender-based advantages had reversed by 2002, with men experiencing larger wage gains from FDI than women. This change may have resulted from the shift of foreign-invested enterprises to higher productivity and more domestically oriented production, and from this shift interacting with gender-based employment segregation to more greatly advantage workers in male-dominated than female-dominated industries.^[14]

See also

• Chinese patriarchy
• Women in China
• Education inequality in China

Selection of children by gender:

• List of Chinese administrative divisions by gender ratio
• Female infanticide in China
• Abortion in China
• Missing women of China

Notes

References

• China Women's Federation, the National Bureau of Statistics. Data report for the second sample survey of the social status of Chinese women [R]. 2001 (In Chinese)
• Deborah M. Figart, “Gender as more than a Dummy Variable---Feminist Approaches to Discrimination”, Review of social Economy, page 1-32, number 1, 1997.55
• Elissa Braunstein, Mark Brenner, “Foreign direct investment and gendered wages in urban China”, Feminist Economics 13(3 – 4), July/October 2007, 213 – 237
• Francine D Blau, Marianne A Ferber, Anne E Winkler(2010), The Economics of Women, Men, and Work. Prentice Hall
• Gale,Summerfield . 1994. ‘‘Economic Reform and the Employment of Chinese Women.’’ Journal of Economic Issues 28(3): 715 – 32.
• Hao Hu, 2003, “On the FDI’s impact on the female employment of developing countries”, Journal of Shanghai Administration institute, December, 2003, Vol.4 No.4 (In Chinese)
• He Cai, Xiaoping Wu, “social change and occupational gender inequality [J]”, Society, 2005, (6) (In Chinese)
• Human Development report 2011, UNDP, 2011
• Jieyu Liu, “Gender Dynamics and redundancy in urban China”, Feminist Economics 13(3 – 4), July/October 2007, 125 – 158
• Research group of Chinese Women's Social Status survey, Chinese Women's Social Status Overview [M] Beijing: Chinese Women's Press, 1993 (In Chinese)
• Shejian Liu, “Review and Reflection on China's employment system three decades Reform”, Social Sciences, 2008.3 (In Chinese)
• Shen Tan, 2000, "The Relationship between Foreign Enterprises, Local Governments and Women Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta", in edited by Loraine A. West & Yaohui Zhao, Rural Labor Flows in China.
• Wenshu Gao, “Empirical analysis on FDI’s impact on employment of China”, The papers collection of the International Symposium of development and innovation of the service industry, 461-468, 2007
• William A. Darity Jr., Patrick l. Mason, “Evidence on discrimination in Employment: codes of Color, codes of Gender,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 12, Issue 2, 63-90
• W. L,Parish . & S. Busse. Gender and Work [A]. in W. Tang & W. L. Parish. Chinese Urban Life under Reform: The Changing Social Contract [M]. New York: Cambridge University Press.2000.
• Xiaojiang Li, “where do we go during 50 years?--- A review on Chinese women's liberation and development process [J]”. Zhejiang Academic Journal, 2000, (2) (In Chinese)
• Xin TONG, “Labor Markets, Gender and Social Stratification”, Collection of Women’s Studies, Sept. 2010, No.5 Ser.No.101 (In Chinese)
• Zhongzhe Wu, “Gender inequalities of the labor market during market transition”, Economic theory and policy research, second issue, 2009 (In Chinese)