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Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the author of the novel “Lotus” and the memoir “Socialism is Great!”
“Women hold up half the sky,” Mao Zedong famously said. But are they really? Take a look at this week's annual session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature and the country's parliament, of sorts. There were many women in the Great Hall of the People, but most of them were serving tea. In 2024, actual female delegates made up only about 26% of the approximately 3,000 members.
Therefore, Chinese women hold only a quarter of the political sky. And more ranks, not even that. Currently, there is only one woman in the 25-member Politburo, the leading body of the Communist Party, whose standing committee is an all-boys club.
Globally, the proportion of women in parliament is seen as an important indicator of their political participation, and China is lagging behind. It ranks 107th in the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, published by the World Economic Forum, down from 102nd in 2022.
I blame the gender structure and deep-rooted patriarchal culture, which prevented women from advancing in their political careers. A relative of mine recently retired from her position as district vice president in Nanjing. Long before she stepped down, she stopped trying to climb the ladder. There's no point if the party doesn't designate you for potential advancement early on, she explained.
Nomenklatura, a system borrowed from the Soviets, serves as the CCP's main tool in promoting and appointing cadres. It relies mainly on the top-down selection of candidates by the party rather than candidates running voluntarily as is the case in a democratic system.
In 2016 and 2017, Xinhui Jiang, an assistant professor at Nanjing University, conducted research on female representation in four county-level congresses in central China's Hunan and Hubei provinces. She discovered that male and female officials followed different paths: men were more likely to hold senior positions, and women to hold popular positions where there were quotas covering gender and ethnic minorities.
To get anywhere in Chinese politics, you have to be a member of the Communist Party. It currently has nearly 100 million members, but less than 30 percent of them are women. Moreover, they are usually assigned to so-called “feminine roles”, such as family planning, culture or education, while men are promoted to powerful positions such as party secretary or head of the economy.
In the 1990s, Chen Muhua, China's second female vice premier, advocated a quota system with at least one female leader in all layers of government up to the provincial level. In 2007, a 22 percent quota was implemented for the National People's Assembly the following year. Local governments also have their own gender quotas.
Positive policy is needed. In research published in China Quarterly, Jiang concluded that quotas had a positive impact on women, but were only loosely adhered to.
One factor is traditional gender roles in China, especially in the vast countryside. Many male villagers still believe that respectable women should not be interested in politics; Others cite the saying, “A woman has long hair and short wisdom.” Very few women are elected village chief; A study published in Open Edition Journals in 2007 put the number at 1 percent. This may have increased a few points, but the data is scarce.
The lack of political representation of women in China does not serve the country's sustainable development. This era of shrinking populations requires policies that are fair or even favorable to women. Beijing should introduce institutional reforms to allow male and female cadres equal career opportunities, increase the gender share at the local and national levels to at least 30 percent, a “critical minority,” and expand its reach beyond the National People’s Congress. The system should be implemented strictly.
Women deserve half the political sky.
