China's move from a planned economy to a market economy is having
unintended consequences - including discrimination against women in
employment and pay.
With the government having less say in how companies and other
employers hire and hand out pink slips, often the first employees
to be laid off are women. This grim reality was outlined in a
recent 25-page report issued by the All-China Federation of
Trade-Unions (ACFTU), describing conditions women face in the
workplace.
"Businesses have begun to calculate the costs of laborers, and
women are the first to be considered surplus," Liu Ping, the
ACFTU's deputy division director on women's rights, told China
Daily.
The report was compiled after studying information gathered between
1978 and 2002, after a study was done on the working lives of
female workers in Shanghai, Chongqing and provinces such as
Liaoning, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Gansu.
It
found that as reforms have been implemented in the transition to a
market economy, industries such as the textile sector and some
other female-dominated areas have sustained large-scale layoffs.
Not surprisingly, a disproportionate number of women got the
ax.
The number of urban women employed in the surveyed cities in 2002
was about 41.6 million, or 17.3 million less than in 1996.
What's more, just 39 percent of women who lose their jobs become
re-employed - 24.9 percentage points less than men who lose their
jobs. What naturally occurs is that women - with increasing
pressure to find sources of income - choose short-term or temporary
jobs, or try self-employment.
That's all well and good.
Women who are destitute may turn to less positive forms of
employment, such as prostitution. This bedevils authorities and can
cause untold societal problems, from spawning criminal gangs to
spreading the scourge of HIV/AIDS and the untold misery and costs
it brings.
A
large proportion of women who take legitimate temporary jobs earn
incomes that fall short of the minimum standards required by
government for social security insurance. And in such low-level
jobs, women are stuck in a rut with no hope for improving theirs or
their children's prospects for advancement or a better life.
And unlike in the planned-economy era, when salaries or wages were
often determined by workers' experience, women have been pushed
into low-end jobs where time and experience mean nothing. This just
reinforces the ever-widening gap between the incomes of men and
women.
In
fact, from 1990 to 2000, the divide between men's and women's
incomes grew 7.4 percentage points, or from 100:77.5 to 100:70.1,
the ACFTU report shows. In 2002, there were twice as many women in
jobs below the 500 yuan (US$60) monthly income level, with 1.5
times as many men holding 2,000-yuan (US$240) jobs as women.
Gender discrimination is also reflected in management and
leadership roles in private businesses and government, with women
accounting for just 1.3 percent of management posts in all
organizations in 2002. That's utterly ridiculous, given the massive
talent pool in China.
Women should demand change, since there's little motivation for
market-based firms to change their ways, especially in a system
that is only now developing and has much maturing to do. Councilors
and political delegates must take a long view and see women as
partners in this massive economy. Trade unions should play a more
active role in representing women's rights and demand that
employers - private and government - do what is right for the
future of women, families and the nation's future.
"Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labor
front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work," Chairman
Mao Zedong said in 1955. "This should be done as quickly as
possible."
No
time like the present.
(China Daily July 2, 2004)
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