Page 129 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

116 LOUISE EDWARDS
there was great variation in whether quotas or targets were applied or aspired to around
the country (Jacka 1997:88 and 228). As a result of this shift, there was grave concern
that the numbers of women elected to political office would decline. As this chapter will
reveal, a decade since the start of the reforms the situation appears to be slightly more
complicated than a simple decline in numbers resulting from the decline in protective
measures. (See the accompanying tables for an overview of women’s participation in both
Party and state bodies.)
In the state structure—as opposed to the CCP structure—it appears that a maximum
limit for women may have been established. Numbers of women delegates to the NPC
have been stable at 21 per cent since 1978, despite the removal of quotas and targets (see
Table 5.1). Moreover, women have represented about 22 per cent of the deputies at the

Table 5.1 Number and gender composition of deputies to the National People’s Congress

Source: Adapted from Wang Yinpeng (2001), p. 6.
local and provincial level in the last two elections as well (averaging variations for specific
provincial and county conditions) (see Table 5.4). It appears that the targets and quotas
have become unofficial maximum limits. The ‘quota/limit’ in numbers permitted into the
political scene is accompanied by a ‘glass ceiling’ that serves to stop women progressing to
the upper echelons of NPC decision-making structures. The numbers of women in the
higher levels of NPC—that is, at the State Council and Standing Committee levels—
remain low for the entire post-1980s reform period (see Tables 5.2 and 5.3). The peak in
numbers for these higher echelon positions that occurred during the Cultural Revolution
in 1975 and 1978 has not received a positive appraisal in recent years. This is because the
discrediting of the Cultural Revolution as a whole denies this particular aspect of ‘success’
as being regarded as anything other than an aberration—indeed it has been described as
having led the women’s movement along an ‘unhealthy path’ (Ye Zhonghai 2000:222).
Lin Jiling describes it as a period when equality between the sexes went so far as to
diminish any distinctions between the sexes—clothing, work divisions and aesthetics
(2001:256).
At the broader political level, women have a marginal place within China. In
1993 women represented only 17 per cent of the Leading Cadres of the China’s Mass