Access to social security

Under the regulation of retirement, the women retirement age is five years earlier than that of men. Women have to leave their job earlier than men. This may stop the employers to promote women to higher position, in long term, it would also increase the burden of the social welfare system (Han, 2006).

 

Working environment

The permission for birth

Despite the fact that urban women are totally freed from assigned jobs for life and the control on marriage from work units, all ladies have to request the approval for having a kid.

The saying is based on the situation that many employers are choosing not to use women in an economy where there is an oversupply of labor due tothe inevitable costs imposed on themselves. Women are perceived as creating additional expense in the form of maternity leave and childbirth costs. Child-rearing is generally believed as the responsibility of women, that’s why male employee is more preferable than female. Meanwhile, feminists are asking for a system of state-supported childbirth insurance to reduce discrimination (Tatlow, 2010).

 

The obstacle to be civil servant

Since 2005, women are required to have invasive testing for sexually transmitted diseases and malignant tumours if they apply for civil service jobs. Nonetheless, information on their menstrual cycles is needed to be provided to the department (Kaiman, 2012).

"Sexually transmitted diseases can't be transmitted at work, so we think it's unnecessary to test for them – and the tumour examinations, these are unnecessary as well."

It seems the unreasonable requirements for applying for the position of civil services are unfair to the women. They are being hindered to get the job.

 

Women power up? Not yet

As a whole, the organizations recorded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges shows a moderate expansion of the scope of female board seats of 0.3%, from 3.7% in 1997 to 4% in 2010, while women made up only 5.6% of CEOs in 2010.

Despite the continuing contribution of Chinese women in corporate settings, they are kept under official control among Chinese companies especially at the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), yet the Chinese government’s official view women are just as capable as men in the workplace. They made up 5.4% of non-SOE board chairs in 2010, but just 2.9% of them are on the board seats at SOEs, and they filled 10% of director seats in SOEs, compared with 13.7% at non-SOEs. The divergence can be clearly displayed by the proportion of women at the CEO level, it jumped to 8.2% and fell to 3.6% of chiefs at non-SOEs and SOEs respectively in the same period from 1997 to 2010 (Korn, 2012).