In the 100th Communist Party of China: where are the women? | Politics News

One hundred years after the Communist Party of China (CCP) was secretly founded on a Shanghai ship, China is different from the world the party wanted to overthrow in 1921.

People are richer, have fewer children, and have more job opportunities than their ancestors could have ever imagined.

But between the ups and downs, one thing remains the same.

Men continue to dominate political power.

There were no women in Shanghai that day and women’s rights were not specifically mentioned, although they were in the air as part of the protests that would inspire the leaders of the Chinese “New Culture Movement” and the KPZ on May 4, 1919. .

2017 at the last national congress of the PCN – the ceremony is held every five years – Only 83 of the 938 elite delegates were women, which is less than 10 percent, according to the China Data Lab, a project by the University of San Diego in California.

Most of the women were found in the Provincial Standing Committee, with each level of power becoming increasingly scarce until the arrival of Deputy Prime Minister Sun Chunlan, the only woman among the 25-member Politburo men.

There is not a single woman in the party’s most elite inner circle, a seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.

No party for young people

The absence of women is, in part, a dynamic of party membership and a way for individuals to rise through the ranks. Today, women make up only a quarter of the members, and once included, they focus on less competitive positions than men.

In other words, they are losing from the beginning.

“There is a bias in favor of men when it comes to hiring party members and there is a tendency for men to take important positions in men or women,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor in the UCSD’s public policy school.

“Police, internet censorship, the military are very important and tend to be male-dominated specializations. Women are usually placed in education, in the United Front (propaganda), in social policies. You can get a pretty high level in those types of specializations, but you don’t see it as soon as you get to the top path, ”he said.

Upgrading requires party members to achieve certain milestones in order to be eligible for elite positions. Most of China’s top leaders have served as governors or party secretaries in a major province or city, but there are few women in these positions and as a result, there are few female candidates for senior positions.

By the time they are ready for an elite position, many women are already retiring – they are only 55 years old for women in China.

“It’s not like the US, where 45-year-old Barack Obama or JFK can be candidates,” said Richard McGregor, author of The Party: The Secret World of Communist Chiners of Communers. “You move up a level in a very structured way and you retire in a very structured way. It’s very rare to be a member of the Politburo before the age of 55, so that means this huge record of promoting women is also very difficult to correct. ”

Unpaid fees

While it is believed that 10 percent of provincial, municipal, and regional executive positions should be set aside for women, quotas are rarely met because of a deep preference for men, says Valarie Tan, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Germany.

Beyond institutional barriers, Tan says women often support unspoken cultural biases and state support under traditional leadership of China under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. downward birth rate.

“Gender stereotypes or traditional historical norms still follow a lot today. According to Xi Jinping, I would say even more, the hope is that eventually women should get married, take care of their children, grow old and take care of their grandchildren, ”Tan said.

Analysts say Chinese women have cultural prejudices and maintain official protection of traditional gender norms, preventing them from rising to the highest levels of the ruling party. [Noel Celis/AFP]

Party members make up 37.5% of town and district committees, but that number ranks in leadership positions, according to ChinaFile, the Asia Society’s US-China Relations Center online magazine.

Women hold only 9.33% of regional positions as head of government or party secretary, falling to 5.29 per cent in cities and 3.23 per cent at the provincial level.

“Because you’re a woman, you don’t have the resources to do other things outside the home,” Tan said. “On the demand side, those in power do not want women to achieve greater political leadership, which would threaten the status quo and patriarchy.”

Same in name

Despite the party’s “revolutionary” rhetoric, which historically encompasses the stories of exemplary women workers, feminism has always depended on the political and economic intentions of the organization, explains Linda Jaivin, author of China’s shortest history.

“From the beginning, the party was promoting the idea that women are strong and should be given certain rights, like men, to be part of the communist project,” Jaivin said.

In fact, one of the most frequently quoted remarks by President Mao Zedong to the founding father of the People’s Republic of China— “Women hold half the sky” —was not an inspired call for women’s rights, caused by a collective farm that expanded in 1953. its productivity is threefold after women are given the same “work points” as men.

While Chinese women were given “nominalism of equality” from the beginning of the Mao era, gender-based violence and, later, one-off policies followed the priorities for male children. China currently has 34.9 million more men than women, according to the latest census report.

In the 80s when China sided with market reforms and opened up its economy, it was largely back to practices that were believed to have returned to concubinage or “lady culture” and prostitution.

Mao Zedong (right) along with his revolutionaries at the end of the long 1938 march. The comment that “women hold half the sky” was supposed to involve them economically in the communist project. [File: AP Photo]

Nowadays, discussions about feminism and sexual harassment are censored on the net, and it has also made it difficult for parties to divorce, including a mandatory “new cooling-off period” in cases of domestic violence. Other problems, such as unbalanced wages, continue.

Jaivin said the men of the party have no will to relinquish power and therefore pursue policies to maintain the status quo.

“The PCK is happy to talk about strong and successful women who are helping the nation and the parties and the state media even if they present women’s representatives in the nation-state agreement, but few women have serious power and no one has served on the main governing body. you talked about the structural problems that some really serious feminists in China would rather throw back at women, ”Jaivin said. “Basically, it’s because the owners of patriarchal power don’t want to share power.”

Regional representation

However, the problems facing women in China are not uncommon in East Asia. Arkemesi calls Japan “democracy without women” while men outnumber women in politics South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, although all three have had female leaders.

Lynette Ong, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and the Asian Institute, said that gender bias also continues across the region in the social sphere. To some extent, Chinese women in cities are still better than their neighbors in South Korea and Japan, as women continue to be pressured to leave work after having children, likely to enter their careers and enter politics.

“I would say it’s all relative. While women are not the same as men in China, they are better off than the beginning of the PRC. And compared to the situation of women in other Confucian societies, such as Japan, South Korea, Chinese women, especially in big cities. they will arguably have better status, largely because they were “released” by President Mao, ”Onge said.

Whether or not Chinese women are released, they still have a long way to go before they can hold half of the political sky.