In China’s Modern Economy, a Retro Push Against Women

When Mao said that "women hold up half the sky", did he ever realize that the Sky was in reality a glass ceiling? I remember an old Start Trek episode entitled "For the Earth Is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky".

China is a country which, for more than 2000 years, followed basic Confucian values, thus creating a hierarchy of power levels. The majority of Confucian texts had women listed near the bottom of the power and influence ladder, often below male slaves. Mao Zedong, whatever were his shortcomings - The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are the two greatest - did believe that women were just as good as men.
From 2002 to 2003 I taught in a 2nd level Chinese college and found 95% of my students were young women. I found them as enthusiastic and intelligent as any of our young men and women, and certainly as smart as the young men in China. However, few of them have seemed to be nearly as successful as their male counterparts. It has everything to do with sexism.
China has made more and faster economic advances in the past 25 years than any other country in the history of the world, but women actually, in my opinion, have, on the whole, done much worse, despite their educational successes.
Unfortunately, most of China's big-time leaders during this period were males, and they seem to believe that they (the men) were responsible for China's incredible advances. Of course they're wrong, but they, including Xi Jinping, would lose "face" if they ever admitted it.

Sounds just like America for women of color!

The US ,especially the tech industry is not any better. I went to a major developer conference yesterday in SF, among the 20-ish speakers presenting on the stage, only 1 was woman.

Maybe, just maybe Americanization is not all that bad

I once asked the wife of a professor colleague with their three kids over dinner at their house if she ever regretted quitting Price Waterhouse to become a full time mom. She said, "Why? I get to spend my whole day with the people I love most in the world, while he has to deal with the rat race and politics.” The reality is most jobs are drudgery, spiced with anxiety. Even a professorship, which is about a cushy as a job gets, cannot compare for many women to being a full time mom. China has an extreme shortage of women. Most men have to work really hard to have any hope of getting a wife. If the thing that women most want in life is kids and a man to help them raise them, they are better off in China than most other countries in the world. There is a nice article about how women are searching for richer men.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268114003242

The sex-ratio in China is wildly skewered: 30,000,000 females are missing. That means that there are 30 million men that will never have a family because the female child was aborted, killed off because of her sex. That China's society is trying to drive any single woman into wedlock is understandable... gosh, there's so few of them around.
I approve of the right to abortion - women must never be breeders, not for a man, not for a community, and not for a government. But if any woman gives in to the demand of her society and does wed and then becomes pregnant, the next trip is to the doctor where the child in her womb had better be the correct sex. If it is female, it goes.
Talk about a rigged game.
I'm astonished that the author of this piece never brought this up.
China's problem isn't that women are missing in the boardroom... it is that so many of them are aborted. The statement that, "Socialist-era egalitarianism has been replaced by open sexism, in some cases even reinforced by law,"is the problem. Given the "indifference" and "boredom" of these Chinese officials, it is in a race with Saudi Arabia on which country can devalue females the most.
My best wishes to anyone caught in this system and trying to change it.

Just look around to see the world male domination in politics, business and the media has created.

Three billion of us live on approximately $2.50 a day. Some 1.3 billion are in extreme poverty, existing on $1.25 a day.

According to figures from UNICEF and other global organizations, almost 21,000 children die every day from hunger, easily-preventable diseases, and wars.

The planet's environment is heading toward a future in which human life itself may not be sustainable. Anyone watching global climate summits knows that governments --the vast majority led by men -- are not doing enough to stem the rush toward catastrophe.

As for Wall Street and the international banking industry, can anyone name a top banker who is female?

The American media, shaped and led by a relatively few men, glorifies violence and marginalizes and degrades women. They have a powerful influence on culture and behavior.

That's the world that male domination has produced.

If women, the ones who give birth and care deeply for their young, were in charge --worldwide-- of politics, business and media, can anyone doubt it would be a better, more humane world, one much more hospitable to children?

A few years ago the Dalai Lama said that women would save the world.

Unfortunately, from most of what I read in the New York Times about the female sex, it looks like they will not have the chance to use their invaluable gifts to solve the problems that are harming and threatening all of us alive today.

Free market isn't free, people!

Hard to believe that "girl wanted" positions are still being advertised in China -- or that they were common in the United States until the 1970s. We in the U.S. shouldn't congratulate ourselves too much. In my industry (I work for the Network of Executive Women, Retail/Consumer Goods), women make up 49% of the workforce but less than 1 in 5 corporate officers and 1 in 20 CEOs!

While progressing in the corporate world may present challenges to women in China as elsewhere anyone who has any knowledge of China knows the role female entrepreneurs play in the business world here and the tremendous success and respect they generate. As one example the 2014 Hurun Report Richest Self Made Women in the World Report found once again Chinese women dominating the self made richest women in the world category of 45 self made women billionaires on the planet China claims 19 the US is in 2nd place with 16 and the UK in 3rd with 4. The top 3 richest self made women in the world are Chinese.

I can see where tradition does play a huge part in this. But even here in the states there are places that still treat women in this manner. I even once traveled over a thousand miles to volunteer my time as I would rather give my time away than work for a company who doesn't think I am worthy of ever moving up. The truth is we are never really alone. A person can meditate and find more support than you will ever need. It can be done in any country by any person and at most anytime of the day or night. It has given me great strength so look past these types of companies/ individuals. The world is growing and changing everyday and in the end it takes both male and female to adjust to it and work together as a team to survive. I believe those who refuse to, in the end, will be left on the sidelines wondering where things went wrong.

We have a nasty subtle and not so subtle patriarchy operative here, primarily under Republican and Tea Party banner carriers. All those anti-abortion agitators are just the most overt way that these anti-diluvian misogynists claim they hold the "moral" high ground. In the more subtle way, women in this country still on average make less than men. People in glass houses . . . . .

In these articles about women being kept down by backward cultural mores and sexist men it seems the effect on children with no mother at home to nurture them and provide for their emotional needs is ever addressed. We know, there is always some academic study that shows that mother’s absence can be adequately mitigated by giving the children an hour of quality time before bed time each day. Such excuses are supposed to make mothers feel better and absolve any guilt. Mothers know those excuses really do not and any guilt is suppressed.

But sacrifices must be made if women are to be invited to sit on corporate boards, such accomplishments being a defining measure of a woman’s success in life. So the children must be filed away each day in the care of inexperienced, impersonal, and ever changing surrogates while mother and dad claw their way to the top. Some children adjust to that regimen but many don’t and society must adjust accordingly to cope with those that don’t.

The truth is that government policies cannot always change drastically nation's attitudes. I think that the vast majority of Chinese people will realize sooner or later that it is in their own interests to protect women's rights in China. And I do still hope that gender equality becomes a reality one day.

Well, I for one salute these women.

Let others, drawn to life in the cubicle, in the airless corridors, and having their thoughts and feelings shaped by this year's management theories and practices, while throwing one's lot in with the company of ambitious liars and fools, climbing corporate ladders, especially ones with greased rungs, make their way in the world.

Not much different than the US in the 60s. Women out of college were expected to know how to type if they didn't plan on being a teacher or nurse.. I knew one of the first female executives of a major corporation in the 70s. She started out as executive secretary to a company executive. She left her job for personal reasons and then told her former boss she wanted to return to the company. He offered her her old position as his secretary. She refused and asked to be put in the executive training program. He acquiesced and she eventually rose to a high position in the company. The floor was sticky here too.

China does have a few women running multinationals or exploring the space, but there are no women in the "highest echelons of the Chinese government" or at the helm of a state-owned company. This may have to do with tales from Chinese history. Women were demonised and seen as a danger or a threat.
In the past when powerful men fell from grace, their wives often got the blame for wrongdoings or bringing bad luck to their husbands. In recent history, Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing was held responsible for her husband's mistakes, because he listened to her. Bo Xilai's wife, Gu Kailai is dubbed as "Lady Macbeth" and blamed for his downfall.
Nevertheless there are many opportunities for women in today's China than there were 100 years ago. However it is still common for many women to believe, that the only way to achieve wealth and influence is to marry the Mr. Right.

Sorry to tell you but according to Forbes half of the richest self-made women in the world, including No.1, are in China. How does that happen in the sexist China portrayed? Also when you have American little girls aspiring to be a model or actress and I've never seen a women in an executive position in a European business, how is it that the West treats women better?

It's annoying that the western media has to poke its nose into everything outside of their geographies, and then they look at everything through the prism of their own myopic viewpoints. I'm a woman, an immigrant in the US, and appreciate the opportunities that exist for female voice and choices. But I still find the workplace to be inherently sexist, and not to forget the extra proof of abolities that i need to furnish as a female, immigrant, younger team member!! Sometimes to a boss whose only difference compared to myself is that he is male ( and many times not as intelligent/skilled/team player)

Don't be pushing 18% board member positions or similar such numbers as a women's accomplishment benchmark in the face of other countries. There's a huge number of women who are oppressed and denied opportunities here in this country that need your attention, dear media! It'll take you a long time to understand and respect the varied cultures outside of the US, so please refrain from judging China, India or the middle east etc.. Play in the sandbox that you understand!

Shhh, don't tell our secret! China's top universities are one of the best places to recruit outstanding female talent for global businesses. If you care about talent and results and don't get hung up on your employees having a penis, you can find outstanding people. The cohort from the early 2000's that I am most familiar with is now dramatically punching above its weight in the technical and business leadership of our organization.

To some extent Chinese women gravitate to international companies because they have or at least are perceived to have better opportunities for women. The opposite is true of ambitious women and state-owned enterprises. China does do a fantastic job of gender balance in even the toughest STEM courses, and just walking around Tsinghua you cannot help but notice the difference in gender balance with say MIT.

It's not too surprising to see an increase in sentiment towards 'traditional' values now that the government is no longer actively suppressing it and the standard of living has both greatly increased over a few generations as well as plateaued recently. Over the long term given the good results in educating women, I expect to see more and more talented and experienced women working their way through the system in all but the most recalcitrant organizations.

The lack of imagination, in my opinion, is that gender roles appear so fixed. One must shunt down one shuttle, like cattle to the slaughter, or the other. In reality many women up and down the economic scale are workers, leaders, breadwinners, and homemakers, and more invisibly regarding the homemaker role, so are men. Why would women anywhere want to take on more work with not enough money to pay for child care or other supportive societal structures? Why would men help them when women are portrayed as their emasculating competitors? Women need to start their own companies, unions with child care benefits, and fill more political slots. It has to become expensive not to have options to black and white thinking, and a gray life.

The U.S. 20% penetration, while twice that of China is still only 40% of where is will be when we finally overcome our own cultural sexism. Relativly speaking we are not that much different than China in this regard. The world will indeed be a different place once women gain their fair voice. Until then, expect us that don't like change (in this case mostly male) to resist.

So, to be clear, China's economy is powered by a family unit that consists of a male bread winner and a female who is devoted to developing and growing the children.

Shocking. Really.

Young unmarried men are the kindling of any revolution. China's surplus of young men fuels the government's efforts to stigmatize unmarried women. Popular culture, consciously or not, portrays any unmarried 30 year old woman as a tragedy and an ungrateful daughter.

The parallels between east and west are striking. Like it or not, there is still, to this day, a double standard for women in all walks of life in the US. Do we have a post sexist society? Not yet...

When I was single, I hated it when people (mostly older men) would say, "Why didn't you ever get married? I can imagine the frustration. And I am a male.

China seems to be allowing some terrific female minds to go to waste, a huge human resource squandering, on a national scale.

I wouldn't mind this so much if the Chinese also talked about men being homemakers. That's the problem, even in this country. Women who want to join the work force are expected to be homemakers, even if their husbands love children, and she is better at advanced technology than child care.

Lag? A vast understatement. In China and elsewhere, patriarchy is a pernicious, resilient, and often insidious reality in the societies of the world, where professional creativity of billions of women could be unleashed if testosterone-fueled male power structures could be obsoleted, and gender equality becomes a reality. A very sweeping statement: the salvation of the planet depends upon it.

Along with relaxing government regulation on business and even public universities and enterprises, China unfortunately has also relaxed it prohibition on gender discrimination. Openly sexist remarks become more tolerated now than 20 or 30 years ago. Traditional attitude that was suppressed during earlier years made a comeback. However, as China develop economically, the potential of young women must be tapped if China wants to continue its growth. Most of young women themselves are starting to fight for their right. Government policies cannot change a nation's attitude, but people can. The majority of Chinese people will realize that it is in their own best interest to protect women's right in China.

Dong Mingzhu, president of an air-conditioner manufacturer, blames women for their poor showing in the workplace.“Women don’t try hard enough,” she said. “They are too happy to go off and find a man to rely on.”

That statement is suspect. Women want what any self-interested human would want. If women are 'choosing' not to be paid for their work--they're not choosing at all. If the workplace is treating women in a way that makes staying home the better choice, then focus on the workplace not on the person.