For modern women, rising status equals high anxiety

(Ecns.cn) – Chinese women – who are increasingly seen as equal to men – cheerfully celebrated International Women's Day with half a day off work on March 8, yet the festivities could not hide the confusion that many feel about the unanticipated pressure their improving social status has created.

In recent years, the standard of the "perfect" woman has changed greatly in China: one popular Web site stipulates that a woman must be a diligent housewife, a master chef, a skilled IT technician, an adept driver, a clever spy on her husband, and a martial arts practitioner.

This may be an exaggeration, but it still reflects the problems that an ordinary woman must face when holding up "half of the sky." In order to succeed, she must uphold many of the traditional values of a good wife while also competing with her colleagues, regardless of their gender.

Half the sky

In 1968, Chairman Mao Zedong stated that "women hold up half the sky." And with that famous slogan, Chinese revolutionaries have since proclaimed that there can be no emancipation for humanity without the participation and emancipation of women.

As a result, many significant achievements have been made in the past decades, substantially raising the overall status of Chinese women.

The gains are primarily due to government efforts to support gender equality. Campaigns for public health and literacy have benefited women immensely, as has the enactment of legislation to support women's rights, such as the Marriage Law (introduced in 1950 and amended in 1980) and the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women (which was introduced in 1992 and amended in 2005), noted China Daily.

But what women really need is a larger diversity of lifestyles, more living space, increased opportunities for advancement, and a better way to explain "equality" in a broader sense, according to a feminist study group at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Without a doubt, building a career is the first and most important step for a woman to acquire equality, noted Xinmin Weekly.

In 2010, around 350 million Chinese women chose to work as full-time employees, an approximate 46 percent of the employed people in the country, according to surveys by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) and the State Statistics Bureau.

Last November, The Economist, a UK-based magazine, released a special report on global employment in which it mentioned that the proportion of women in China's workforce was nearly 70 percent in 2010, the highest in the world.

Yet to remain competitive, women have to work extra hard while also maintaining and developing close family relations. And though women are making huge progress in the workplace, they are still paid less and have access to fewer top jobs than men.

A glass ceiling

According to Xinmin Weekly, of the world's Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., 136 did not have female executives in 2010, including Citibank and Rockefeller. Among the UK's FTSE 100 companies, only four had hired women as CEOs. Even in Northern Europe, where women are known to hold a very high social status, only 17 percent of the 500 surveyed companies had women as board directors.

In China, the ratio is also very low, and there is a big income gap between male and female employees.

Last year, the number of female billionaires on Hurun's list of the 1,000 richest Chinese individuals hit an historic high, with 156 women making the cut. Rupert Hoogewerf (better known as Hurun in China), the founder and chief researcher of the China Rich List, commented that Chinese women are apparently achieving a higher social status, but their wealth is still far less than Chinese men.

According to the Blue Paper on Women's Lives released by the ACWF last month, Chinese women in ten surveyed cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, earn an average of 35.8 percent of their family incomes.

It is widely agreed that opportunities for career women in Chinese society are still very limited; and after having a child a woman's options become even more limited, as she is forced to choose between family and work.

Side effects

As more and more women put their careers first, they are also becoming increasingly independent when it comes to romance and marriage. However, the trend does not always bring about positive results.

In the last decade, the number of failed marriages has doubled in China, and divorce is now very common. In 2011, more than 2.1 million couples applied for divorce in the country, a figure that was 1.96 million in 2010.

What China has experienced in the last ten years is equivalent to what Western societies experienced in 50 years, and the ramifications are significant.

Many young girls are after fancy cars and expensive houses, but ignore the essence of marriage, for example. They believe that material wealth is a short cut to a good life, but many end up brokenhearted instead.

Meanwhile, some girls choose not to get married at all and gradually become "left behind" women, a disparaging term for middle-aged women who are single.

Worse still, according to a 2011 survey conducted by the All-China Women's Federation, roughly 25 percent of households in China experience domestic violence, and the victims are disproportionately women.