Speech on the Third East Women’s Forum
August 24, 1998
Zou Xiaoqiao

Respected Madam Chairperson
Dear Friends,

Good morning!

First of all, please allow me on behalf of the Chinese Delegates to extend our heartfelt thanks to the host, Mongolian Liberal Women’s Brain Pool, for its hospitality accorded us and wish this Forum a great success. Now I’d like to take this opportunity to brief you on the changes of Chinese women’s situation, including problems, measures and achievements since the last Forum.

A.	 Women’s Employment
Women’s employment is a fundamental way for them to participate in society and achieve developments. At present, employed females account for 46.6% of the total number of employees in China. In recent years, however, the economic structural adjustment and the transformation of managing mechanism in enterprises have brought about unemployment to some workers, among them women are the majority. Because of unemployment, women’s status both in society and family is effected. According to some uncompleted statistics, by the end of 1997, the registered number of unemployed in the country has reached 5.77 million including 3.04 million women, making up 52.7%. There are 2.84 million laid-off women workers from the state owned enterprises mainly in the machinery and textile industries. Most of them have poor educational background, lower technical skills and relatively older ages and therefore face difficulties in finding new jobs. When looking at the sample survey by the State Statistics Bureau last year, we find that the re-employment rate was 26.5% for the total and 23.3% for women. The majority of the laid-off women workers have not got re-employed yet.

In order to help these women out of difficulties, many NGOs, including the All-China Women’s Federation, the biggest women NGO in China, have conducted vocational training courses of all subjects, such as accounting, preschool education, secretary, tailoring, computer and so on. The All-China Women’s Federation has initiated an action aiming at assisting one million laid-off women workers to be re-employed by the year 2000. In 1996, 470,000 laid-off women received training and 230,000 got new jobs. Again in 1997, 530,000 got trained and 240,000 re-entered labor market.

In addition, women’s organizations in 25 provinces have set up training bases for laid-off women workers. Some of them have also established job information and guidance centers and employment agencies. All these have played positive roles in women’s re-employment. In another way, we actively push government to take up effective measures, in order 
    to expend employment channel; 
    to create more job opportunities suitable to women; 
    to provide better training and re-employment services tailored to laid-off women;         
    to upgrade occupational safety and health standard for women;
    to improve maternity insurance and 
    to protect women’s legal rights in employment.  

We are informed that given the current status of women’s employment, the government departments concerned will organize training courses for 800,000 laid-off women workers and provide jobs for 70% of them in the following 3 years.

B.	Women’s Political Participation
We think that the equal share of power and decision making is an irresistible historical trend especially at the turning of the century. It is our long and arduous task to turn equality on the law to the equality in practice. We have seen that women’s organizations in every country have actively made their efforts in this regard. However, in the issue of women’s participation in politics, Chinese women confront many obstacles and problems like women in other countries and regions. 

At first place, Chinese women have to combat the feudal ideology rooted in thousand years of culture, the prejudice from both male and female and the sense of inferiority. Besides, women’s relatively low educational level, the weak sense of political participation, tendency to rely on improving political participation environment by others and so on so forth are all obstacles to hinder the uplifting the level of women’s political participation.

In order to get more women into the decision making, we have done the followings:   
— to strengthen training on women’s political awareness and management ability;
— to educate women in building up their sense of self- respect, self- confidence, self-reliance and  self-improvement;
— to increase dialogue with the government departments concerned.
So we made active preparations for the election of the deputies to the Ninth National People’s Congress this year. Our efforts turn out pleasing results. The female deputies to the Ninth National People’s Congress convened last March account for 21.8%. The percentage is higher than the previous congress.

But we are not satisfied with the present status of Chinese women’s political participation. In fact, the number of women in leading post is not comparable either with the number of the female population nor their contribution to the society. Their political participation remains in the shape of a pyramid. There are more women leaders in the grass-root level and in the deputy positions. We clearly understand that It is by no means easy to achieve the gender equality in political arena. The progress of women’s political participation always goes along with the progress of the civilization. It is very much influenced by social, cultural and economic factors. Meanwhile, women’s own quality is also a vital condition to their political participation.

C.	Women and Poverty  
As far as poverty eradication is concerned, the All-China Women’s Federation has set up the goal to help one million women out of poverty between 1996 to 2000. In the period of 1996 to 1997, 590,000 women have successfully shaken off the poverty and 23.1 million women have joined training courses and mastered basic practical skills through our help. 

There are still 50 million poor populations in rural areas in present China. Women make up more than 60% of them. Those poor women are mainly living in remote mountainous areas and in the areas where the condition even for existence is poor. They are illiterates or very poor in education. They don’t know science and technology. They don’t have any productive means and materials. They even don’t have the knowledge about the world miles away. So they don’t have any idea on how to improve their lives though they are eager to.

Based on our experience in the previous two years, we will go on to carry out activities for rural women like: “learning and competing campaign” (i.e. to acquire literacy and technical know-how, to emulate each other in accomplishments and contributions),  “poverty alleviation chain actions”, “ revolving fund program”, “hand-in-hand projects”, etc. In addition, this year we have initiated a new way of poverty alleviation. That is to develop co-operations between provincial women’s federations. Women in relatively developed provinces help women in poor provinces by planning, sending technical groups, providing technical services, joint projects, setting up schools for drop-out girls and so on. The purpose is to mobilize the local natural and human resources and develop co-operation so to further build up local women’s ability. We are happy to have witnessed positive results till now. 

Since the time is limited to each speaker, I only give this very brief introduction. The Chinese delegates are willing to exchange more information and experience with you in workshops.

Thank you!