Asian Studies

The Peoples Republic of China is currently a totalitarian state the only political party that is allowed to exist within the borders of China is the Communist Party. Due to this fact, most information regarding womens rights is regarded as classified secrets that can not go beyond the territory. Much statistical information on induced abortions, kidnapping and trafficking in women and girls, sterilization, abortions, infanticides other many other violations of human rights are unknown to many.

Even though it can not be denied that the Chinese government has came up with free market policies since the 1980s in order to help lift many of the Chinese population from absolute poverty. The country now has the fastest growing economy in the globe. It is notable that some women have gained a lot from these economic improvements, most of them have not.

Since the coming to power of Mao Tse-Tung, the Communist party has formally outlawed most of the old Chinese traditions and laws that they saw could not benefit the state. He took power in 1949 and foot binding become a thing of the past. His belief was that by enforcing gender equality, China could easily rise to a world power (Carolyn ). Even though his tenure was marked with prosecution of Christians and mandated policies that saw the death of millions of people, he changed the oppression of women from working and producing for the homes to working for the state.

Under his law, women started to get quality education, rights and freedom, marriage, but the paradox was that these laws were ignored in remote areas and villages. Even today domestic violence is a common occurrence and trafficking of children and women especially girls is widely reported.

The government China released a white paper in 2005 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women. According to the Chinese law, there is a section that promotes equality between men and women and it is nine sections including family life and politics. The white paper includes the efforts of the government to try to eliminate the discrimination of women in getting quality education. The white paper also points out the fact that they have not completely curbed the problem of gender equality. Until now, very few women play important role in the government. In the Communist government, there are only 22 women in a committee of 192 people that constitute the Central Committee which the highest ring in the government. There has been an increase in the level of womens influence in politics over the past 50 years but it is still relatively low.

China is the most populated country in the world with a population about 1.3 billion. The effort of the government to curb and reduce this ballooning population saw the introduction of law in 1970s that allowed each family to have only one child. Boys have always been highly valued in China due to their Confucian tradition. Boys are the ones who carry the name of the family, receive higher wages, are considered to be better workers, and are the ones who are viewed as the parents insurance when they reach old age and. Due to the law to have only one child, parents prefer to have boys rather than girls.

New-born females are therefore either killed or abandoned. When a woman feels that the child to be born is girl-child then abortion becomes the only option. Abortion has been encouraged since 1997 with hundreds of mobile abortion clinics patrolling the remote areas and villages where there is no access to health facilities (Think Quest). After the birth of the first child, women are forced to accept sterilization or abortion and this is enforced by local authorities who are also forced to adhere to one-child family rule.

Currently, most government officials are coming to the realization that this policy was ill advised. According to birth records, it is reported that only 100 girls are born out of 120 boys and if this trend is not changed, then it means that by 2020, there will be more than 30 million Chinese men who will not be able to find women to marry. This could result in to a civil unrest that the government might not be in a position to control.

Today in China, women workers are predominant in the banking sector, agriculture, export manufacturing, and textile work. Most of the firms are worked by women since children and husbands have moved to the cities for better pay since the firms can no longer pay well that can be enough to support a family.

In China, there are about 100 million women who work in isolated conditions on large plots of farm and they only earn about 1 per day. China is the leading country with the highest number of suicide cases among women. Urban centers in south eastern China has many sweat shops operations which are very profitable to the state yet they force their workers to work for long hours under bad conditions with very little pay. Most of these laborers are young women who have migrated from rural areas where farming is the main activity with the aim of surviving.

The most unfortunate thing is that the government currently bars migrants from getting legal residency and as a result, they are denied access to housing, heath care and education. Due to the fact that these women work under in the informal sector of the economy, they are not covered by the labor contracts and therefore have no working rights (Nosotro).

Women in Peoples Republic of China has equal rights with men dominating in all spheres of life, economic, cultural, political, social and family life. This is only written on the paper but is rarely practiced in homes, streets, and workplaces in the country. It is therefore in the hands of women and those who support them to rise to the occasion, and organize, demand for the quality of life and to the freedom to which all are should be accorded.

In the recent years there has been emergence of a network of institutions to campaign for the interest and rights of women in the country. Some of these organizations are initiatives of the government. The network exist in three levels the first being 2,563 organizations whose functions are to protect the rights and interests of women, law consultant agencies, and lawyers offices under the Federation of Women the second is a visitation and correspondence network under the Federation of Women and it exist in three levels and it has 187,853 visitation and correspondence organizations and third is the organization that safeguards the rights of women in it is jointly founded by these  branches of Federation of Women at all levels (Zhang).

Chinese women have been having trouble in getting the proposed laws enforced and most of the women are ignorant of their rights and this calls for a civic education geared towards ensuring that these women know their rights. Many women organizations have been at the forefront of reporting the problems of women to the relevant authorities but they have been relatively reluctant to act on these complaints. These womens organizations have even tried to come up with suggestions of solving these problems. They have stressed the need for equality by women and a lot of posters and notices have been posted with the aim of stopping trafficking of women. Fudan University in China has a womens union that regularly call women who are employed and educate them about their rights. All-China Womens Foundation has been formed with the duty of preserving and protecting the rights of women in the country.