Women in China: Regressive Gender Governance in Authoritarian States
The House Democracy Partnership and the Women's Foreign Policy Group hosted Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, Congresswoman Carol Miller, and Yaqiu Wang, director of research on China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House for a panel on "Women in China: Regressive Gender Governance in Authoritarian States."
At the National Women’s Congress in Beijing in November of 2023, President Xi Jinping lectured female attendees to exit the workplace, return to the home, get married, and have children. For the first time in two decades, there are no women in the Politburo, the CCP’s executive policymaking body. In a concerted effort over the last few decades, Chinese state-controlled media have shamed unmarried women over the age of 27 as “leftover women” to compel young women to marry early. Moreover, the CCP has further restricted grounds for divorce, making divorce, even in abusive marriages, nearly impossible.
Despite originally adopting gender equality in the aftermath of the cultural revolution, where Chairman Mao Zedong famously said, “women hold up half the sky,” China has continued to regress in the promotion of women in the workplace and public sector as it faces demographic challenges. In comparison with Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, who are also experiencing demographic issues, China is urging women to reject education and equal treatment for more “traditional roles” in child and elder care.
This panel explored how democracies in the region promote women while authoritarian governments control and repress them.
