More needs to be done to solve workplace discrimination: expert
Chinese women have seen a marked improvement in their social status over the past two decades, with more than 70 percent of them involved in making major family decisions, said a white paper released by the State Council Tuesday.
According to the white paper, Gender Equality and Women's Development in China, an annual survey of Chinese women's social status, shows that it has become a trend for married couples to jointly make family decisions, and more women can share family resources on an equal basis with men.
The concept of men and women sharing housework is more accepted, with the housework gap between men and women shortened from 150 minutes 10 years ago to 74 minutes, said the paper.
"However, the burden of doing housework has not been reduced substantially," Feng Yuan, a women's rights advocate and co-founder of Equality, a non-governmental organization that focuses on gender issues, told the Global Times Tuesday.
"The government should create more policies to promote equality between husbands and wives in sharing housework," Feng said.
According to the paper, progress has also been made to protect women's interests.
The number of impoverished women has significantly dropped. In the 592 poorest counties, the female poverty rate dropped from 20.3 percent in 2005 to 9.8 percent in 2010, said the paper.
The average life expectancy of Chinese women rose to 77.4 years in 2010, an increase of 4.1 years over 2000.
Meantime, more women are getting employed and account for 45 percent of the workforce, or 346.4 million in 2013.
However, Feng warned that the income gap between men and women has widened in recent years, while gender discrimination is common.
A woman from Beijing recently filed a lawsuit against the Beijing branch of China Postal Express and Logistics Company, which rejected her job application because they consider women physically weaker than men, The Beijing News reported in March.
But the white paper says it's different in the field of education. In 2014, primary school enrolment rates of boys and girls were both 99.8 percent, and women enjoyed greater opportunities in junior high school and beyond, particularly in higher education.
The UN Women and China will co-host a global leaders' meeting on gender equality and women empowerment at the UN headquarters in New York City on September 27 chaired by President Xi Jinping. Over 70 world leaders are expected to commit to solving gender discrimination at the meeting.
Woman power
Women's role in decision-making and management has significantly improved.
Female deputies made up 23.4 percent of the first session of the 12th National People's Congress in 2013, 2.4 percent higher than two decades before, while female ethnic minority deputies made up 41.3 percent of ethnic minority deputies. In 2013, 47.8 percent of jobs in the central government and its subsidiaries were held by women, and the number of newly employed female civil servants has also increased steadily on the local level.
Chinese women and women's organizations are taking a more active role in international affairs. China currently has 1,695 female diplomats, or 30.7 percent in the field.
