Welcome Change
In China’s male-dominated politics, the youngest member of parliament, 25-year-old Tie Feiyan, feels a certain envy when looking across the border. There are only two women in the Communist Party of China’s 25-member Politburo. The Central Committee, the top policymaking body, has just nine women, which is 4 per cent of its 205 members.
Tie is fascinated by the contrast across the Himalayas. There are 66 female MPs in India’s Lok Sabha, a little over 12 per cent—much less than the 33 per cent many wish for, but still a number that female politicians in China would find agreeable. China is still waiting for its first female president or prime minister, or for that matter, party general secretary. There are no female leaders of provinces, compared with India’s three female chief ministers. But what Tie—and many Chinese scholars—find puzzling is the contradiction between the high status of women in Indian politics and the fact that women enjoy far higher social and economic indicators in China. “Women being more involved is good for the country and for policies,” says Tie. “For social welfare especially, I think women have good instincts.” Indeed, politics is perhaps the only domain where women in China trail their counterparts in the rest of Asia, a 2010 United Nations Development Programme report found. Women’s participation in China’s labour force is higher than 70 per cent, compared to 35 per cent in South Asia. Female literacy rates are more than twice India’s. And China has the highest number of women entrepreneurs in the world.
Tie firmly believes that China will close the political gender gap. Even so, her own story reveals how high the bar actually is. Tie, who worked as a toll-booth operator, was chosen after she became famous in her native Yunnan for diving into a river to rescue a drowning migrant worker. She has also campaigned vigorously for the rights of 61 million ‘left behind children’ of migrant workers. Mao famously said women hold up half the sky. In China today, women face a sky-high barrier to enter politics. But they just might scale it.