A record number of women … but it’s still a man’s world at the top of the Chinese government
While state media boasts about the increased number of female delegates, women’s rights activists complain they are still being frozen out of the top jobs
Despite official boasts about the record number of women taking part in the Communist Party’s congress over the last week, Chinese women are still being excluded from the country’s top-level politics.
Of the 204 people on the party’s Central Committee, just 10 of them are women, a total unchanged from the 18th congress of 2012.
Women’s rights activists and female civil servants have painted a gloomy picture about their chances of influencing the decision-making process even as state media highlighted the rising proportion of female delegates at the 19th congress.
Women now make up 24.1 per cent of the 2,287 delegates, according to People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece.
At the 18th party congress five years ago, 23 per cent of the delegates were women while the figure was 20 per cent at the 17th congress in 2007 and 18 per cent in 2002.
State-run media said the increase reflected the great efforts made by the party to give women members a bigger say and improve gender equality and social stability.