The situation of Chinese women
2 min readIntense Competition and Challenges
Economic reform，including the introduction of a market economy and the opening of China to the outside world，has stimulated individual initiative in China.Competition for jobs has become intense.Obtaining stable and secure employment is no longer easy；to be successful，one needs to work hard and compete.In general，Chinese women were unprepared for this environment and have not been able to compete equally with Chinese men.A number of factors help to perpetuate this situation.
Difficulty of Securing Jobs
In a market economy，the efficiency of an enterprise is a top priority.
To surive and be competitive，industries in China have been reorganizing their labor force and releasing excess workers.The protective policies and regulations previously applied to women often are ignored by management.Many factories and other business enterprises prefer to recruit men because of women’s traditional responsibilities of bearing and rearing children and maintaining households.Ariving late，leaving early，and asking for leave are considered undesirable characteristics of women workers.The result of these aftitudes has been that many women have gone into lowpaying iobs or are receiving lower pay for the same work.
Discrimination in Education
With the implementation of China’s current family planning policy，many families，especially those in the counftryside，wish to have one boy todo heavy farm work and to perpetuate the family line.Infanticide with baby girls，though illegal，is not uncommon.
Country people in the remote mountainous regions of China often are too poor to justily sending their daughters to school.Fewer girls than boys are enroled in basic education in China today，especially in poor and national minority areas.More than 70%of school dropouts are girls.And more than 70%of China’s 220 million semiliterate or illiterate people are women.
Fewer women are enrolled in higher education，in part because some universities openly discriminate against female students，acknowledging that they will choose boys over girls with similar qualifications and entrance examination scores.
