• China National Program for Women's Development
Health of WomenHealth of Women

(1) Ensure women's access to good basic medical and health care services throughout their life cycle, and prolong women's life expectancy.

(2) Reduce the maternal mortality rate to less than 20 per 100,000. Gradually narrow the gap between urban and rural areas in maternal mortality, and reduce the maternal mortality rate among the migrating population.

(3) Raise regular screenings for common gynecological diseases to over 80 percent. Increase the early diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer and breast cancer, and reduce the mortality rate.

(4) Control the spread among women of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

(5) Bring down the incidence of moderate and severe anemia among pregnant and lying-in women.

(6) Ensure that more women are informed about psychological health and ways of avoiding mental illness.

(7) Ensure women's rights to make informed choices on contraception and birth control, reduce unwanted pregnancies and induced abortions.

(8) Increase the proportion of women regularly participating in physical exercises.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Step up maternal and child health care. Optimize distribution of  resources and expand maternal and child health care funding in rural and remote areas. Strengthen construction of non-profit maternal and child health care institutions at all levels, improve maternal and child health care service networks and grassroots health service systems, and provide all women with a consistent standard of health care services. Expedite training of maternal and child health care workers, and improve the quality and quantity of the staff of health care institutions. Step up law enforcement and supervision and thoroughly investigate and deal with any illegal acts that threaten women's health.

(2) Strengthen sci-tech research on women's health. Relying fully on sci-tech progress, extensively plan and optimize the distribution of sci-tech resources, organize cross-departmental, cross-regional, and cross-disciplinary cooperation in key research projects, and strengthen research on major factors affecting women's health and relevant intervention measures. Encourage independent innovation, promote the application of research achievements, and spread new and appropriate technologies that are beneficial to women's health.

(3) Improve women's reproductive health services. Widely disseminate reproductive health knowledge, improve women's self-health care consciousness and abilities, based on their physiological characteristics. Provide a standard reproductive health care service for women at adolescence, at child-bearing age, pregnancy and delivery, menopause, and old age, and help solve their health problems at each physiological stage.

(4) Guarantee pregnant and lying-in women's safe child-delivery. Strengthen the construction of grassroots obstetric institutions and the training of their staff, and improve obstetric services and health care for pregnant and lying-in women. Endeavor to raise the rate of pregnant and lying-in women under systematic medical care management to above 85 percent, the rate of childbirth in hospitals to above 98 percent nationwide, and the rate of rural hospitalized delivery childbirths to above 96 percent. Improve first aid networks for pregnant and lying-in women, disseminate appropriate midwifery techniques, and enhance rescue and treatment of pregnant and lying-in women in critical situations. Implement the subsidy policy for rural pregnant women giving birth in hospitals. Provide pregnant and lying-in women with necessary psychological guidance and health education, disseminate knowledge on spontaneous vaginal delivery, help them to choose a scientific mode of child delivery, and control the number of cesarean deliveries.

(5) Improve prevention and treatment of common gynecological diseases. Disseminate knowledge on prevention and treatment of common gynecological diseases and establish a regular screening system for such diseases. Increase input on special projects, and expand women's cervical and breast cancer screening coverage. Strengthen training on professional knowledge and quality service among grassroots maternal and child health care workers and family planning service providers. Promote the cervical and breast cancer diagnosis and treatment capability of medical institutions and provide subsidies for treatment of critical impoverished patients according to regulations.

(6) Prevent and control the spread of HIV/AIDS and STDs. Improve the operating mechanism for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and STDs. Improve education for target groups of women on disease prevention and treatment, and disseminate effective intervention measures. Intensify supervision on places of entertainment, and severely crack down on drug abuse, prostitution, whoring and other illegal behaviors. Include blocking mother-to-infant transmission of HIV/AIDS, syphilis and hepatitis B in regular maternal and child health care work, step up provision of comprehensive preventive health services, increase HIV/AIDS screening of pregnant and lying-in women to 80 percent and syphilis screening to 70 percent, and raise the application rate of intervention measures to pregnant and lying-in women infected with HIV/AIDS or syphilis, as well as their new-born babies, to above 90 percent.

(7) Improve women's nutrition level. Promote education on and dissemination of health and nutrition knowledge, and advocate scientific and appropriate dietary schemes and regimens. Provide nutrition guidance and intervention to target social groups including pre-natal, pregnant and lying-in, and breast-feeding women according to their specific needs. Prevent and treat anemia among pregnant and lying-in women. Step up supervision on production and distribution of nutrition-enhanced food.

(8) Ensure women's access to quality family planning services. Conduct research and popularize safe, effective and appropriate new contraception and birth-control technologies and methods, advocate informed choices on forms of contraception and birth control, and provide quality contraceptive and birth-control services. Improve dissemination of contraceptive and birth-control knowledge, raise women's self-protection awareness and improve their ability to choose scientific and rational contraceptive methods, and prevent and control unwanted pregnancies and induced abortions. Strengthen men and women's awareness of their common responsibilities with regard to contraception and birth control, research and develop male contraceptives and birth-control products, and encourage men's adoption of birth-control measures to increase the proportion of male contraception.

(9) Improve women's mental health services. Establish a fully-functioning mental illness prevention-treatment-recovery service network covering both urban and rural areas. Provide counseling and services based on women's physiological and psychological traits. Improve mental health training for workers at professional mental health institutions as well as medical and health care institutions. Develop prevention, early discovery and intervention in women's post-natal depression.

(10) Improve health care services among migrant women. Improve the administrative mechanism and security system among migrant women, and ensure that migrant women have access to the same level of health care services as local women residents. Step up the dissemination of health care knowledge among migrant women.

(11) Guide and encourage women's regular participation in physical exercises. Strengthen scientific guidance on women's fitness activities, and raise their fitness awareness. Proactively develop urban and rural community fitness activities, and encourage women to participate in the nationwide fitness drive. Strengthen guidance and services on fitness activities among elderly women and women with disabilities.

Education of WomenEducation of Women

(1) Ensure comprehensive implementation of the gender equality principle in education work.

(2) Work to ensure that the gross enrollment rate of children in kindergartens rises to 70 percent, and that girls enjoy equal access to three-year preschool education.

(3) Increase to 95 percent the retention rate of children in nine-year compulsory education, ensure that girls enjoy equal access to nine-year compulsory education, and eliminate the phenomenon of girls dropping out of school.

(4) Work towards ensuring that the gross enrollment rate of children in senior high school education rises to 90 percent, and that girls enjoy equal access to senior high school education.

(5) Work towards ensuring that the gross enrollment rate of children in higher education rises to 40 percent and that girls enjoy equal access to higher education, and strive to achieve a balanced gender ratio in higher education institutions.

(6) Step up the popularization of women's studies courses in higher education institutions.

(7) Expand the proportion of women in vocational school education and vocational training.

(8) Ensure that women receive an average 11.2 years of education before working age.

(9) Reduce the illiteracy rate of young and middle-aged women to less than 2 percent.

(10) Ensure that the gender equality principle and concept are fully reflected in the standards and teaching processes of education courses of all categories and levels.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Include gender perspective and carry out the gender equality principle in the formulation, revision, implementation and evaluation of educational laws, regulations, policies and programs.

(2) Ensure girls' equal access to preschool education. Provide financial support to ensure that impoverished girls and girls with disabilities receive universal preschool education. Enhance the popularization of preschool education in rural areas, expand rural preschool education resources in various ways, and make efforts to ensure that "left-behind girls" (girls whose parents have moved to other regions of China to work) have access to kindergartens.

(3) Ensure that school-age girls have equal access to compulsory education. Expand the dissemination of the Education Law of the People's Republic of China, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Compulsory Education, and other laws and regulations, raise parents' legal awareness and promote their consciousness of the need to secure girls' right to compulsory education.

(4) Ensure girls' equal access to high school education. Boost support for high school education in impoverished areas in central and western China, and ensure that the demand of girls in rural and poverty-stricken areas for high school education is met. Provide financial support to impoverished girls and girls with disabilities in high school education, and ensure that girls do not drop out of school because of poverty and/or physical disabilities. Progressively provide free secondary vocational education and ensure that girls who fail to go on to senior high school receive the necessary vocational education before seeking employment.

(5) Improve women's access to higher education. Take proactive measures to protect women's equal access to higher education, and increase the proportion of women with higher education among the working-age population. Provide financial support to impoverished and/or disabled women college students in various forms and through multiple channels.

(6) Satisfy women's vocational education needs. Ensure equal emphasis on the importance of vocational school education and vocational training, and provide women with more opportunities and resources for vocational education. Support women in remote poverty-stricken areas and women with disabilities seeking vocational education. Provide compensatory education for overage girl dropouts, and expand their vocational training opportunities. Organize various forms of vocational training for unemployed women, and improve their ability to start their own businesses or to become re-employed. Offer vocational education majors applicable to the physiological and psychological characteristics of women with disabilities.

(7) Enhance life-long education for women. Construct an open and flexible life-long educational system that provides women with diversified, life-long education opportunities and resources. Encourage women to take up various forms of continuing education, and support employing units in providing such education opportunities for their women employees. Improve women's ability to use new media for access to modern distance education.

(8) Promote women's participation in community education. Integrate and optimize community education resources, develop diversified community education modes, enrich community education contents, and satisfy women's individualized study and development needs. Strengthen the development of community education for senior citizens, and provide convenient and flexible learning conditions for female senior citizens.

(9) Step up literacy programs for women. Innovate and improve the operating mechanism for literacy, formulate favorable policies, and reinforce work to provide literacy programs for young and middle-aged illiterate women. After eliminating illiteracy, consolidate the achievements of literacy programs, and carry out in-depth literacy drive and post-drive continuing education through organizing compensatory study.

(10) Improve training for female technological and technical talents. Improve policies for talents in the field of science and technology, and explore the establishment of a multi-layered, multi-channel training system for female sci-tech talents. Gather and train female professional talents by utilizing on State key laboratories, key scientific research projects, and key engineering and construction projects.

(11) Improve women's theoretical research in gender thoeries and the building of women's studies in higher education institutions. Include projects and subjects on gender and women's development in State social science funds and other related funds to promote theoretical women's studies. Expand the discipline ranking of women's studies, and encourage higher education institutions to offer a major or a course on women's studies with a view to cultivating women's studies professionals.

(12) Implement gender evaluation of education contents and process. Include gender experts in the staff of institutions providing guidance on school courses and textbooks. Fully reflect the gender concept in education contents and modes, and guide students to foster gender equality ideas.

(13) Improve gender awareness among education workers. Step up training among education administrators on gender theories, include gender equality content in teacher training programs and courses in normal colleges, and strengthen gender awareness among education administrators. Increase the percentage of women among decision-makers and administrators in schools of all levels and categories, and in education administration departments.

(14) Balance the gender structure of students in areas of study in secondary and higher education. Encourage students' comprehensive development, and reduce the influence of gender on students' choices of majors. Adopt diversified means to encourage more women to participate in high-tech study and research.

Women and the EconomyWomen and the Economy

(1) Ensure women's equal right to work, and eliminate gender discrimination in employment.

(2) Ensure that women account for more than 40 percent of employees, and that the number of urban female workers progressively expands.

(3) Reduce the gap in employment rate and the income gap between men and women in non-agricultural sectors.

(4) Raise the proportion of women among skilled laborers.

(5) Guarantee that the proportion of women among high-level professional and technical personnel reaches 35 percent.

(6) Ensure female workers' safety at work, and reduce the incidence rate of occupational disease among women workers.

(7) Ensure rural women's equal access and right to contracted land management.

(8) Significantly reduce women's poverty level.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Strengthen legal protection of women's economic rights. Enact and improve regulations and policies that guarantee women's equal participation in economic development and their equal labor rights. Ensure women's equal access to economic resources and effective services. Strictly implement employment-promotion and labor contract laws and regulations.

(2) Eliminate gender discrimination in employment. Other than in jobs and posts proscribed by law as unsuitable for women, no unit must refuse to employ women or raise the recruitment standards for women job applicants for gender reason or spuriously for gender reason; and no unit must, in labor contract or other forms, constrain women from marriage and childbearing. Intensify supervision over the enforcement of the labor protection laws, and investigate and deal with, according to law, acts of gender discrimination on the part of the employing units and employment agencies.

(3) Expand women's employment channels. Proactively develop tertiary industry with a view to creating new job opportunities and posts for women. Make continuous efforts to improve the abilities of small and medium-sized enterprises and non-public enterprises to absorb female workers, and adopt effective measures to promote women's employment in pioneer industries and emerging trades. Formulate and bring into effect employment policies favorable to women who experience difficulties in finding employment and provide more help for them in this respect. Improve policies that support women starting their own businesses, and support and help women starting their own undertakings through such measures as skills training, taxes and fees reduction or exemption, subsidized loans, and follow-up guidance.

(4) Promote full employment of female university graduates. Strengthen employment guidance, training and services oriented to female university students and help them make the right decisions for future occupations. Improve policies supporting female university students starting their own businesses, and offer training to help them to that end.

(5) Create favorable employment conditions for women experiencing difficulties in finding jobs. Bring into effect policies on public welfare jobs and help such groups as women at disadvantageous age and with disabilities. Conscientiously implement relevant legal provisions on women returning to their original posts after giving birth. Carry out, such supporting provisions and policies as social insurance subsidies, training subsidies and subsidized micro-finance to help laid-off women start their own businesses or become reemployed.

(6) Improve women's employment structure. Accelerate the process of integrating urban and rural areas, and explore various channels to guid and support rural women make an orderly shift to non-agricultural industries. Improve State policies on training, evaluating and stimulating skilled talents. Strengthen the training of women's vocational skills, and raise the proportion of women among primary, medium, and high-level skilled workers. Guide women to actively participation in scientific research and technological development, and create favorable conditions for them to improve their qualifications.

(7) Fully implement the policy of equal pay for equal work for men and women. Establish a sound, scientific and rational income distribution system. Ensure that employing units offer equal remuneration to workers doing the same work, making the same amount of effort and achieving the same results.

(8) Guarantee female workers' occupational health and safety. Spread education on occupational diseases prevention and control and raise female workers' self-protection awareness, especially those without fixed employment. Strengthen administration and supervision over the hazards of occupational diseases. Include special labor protection for female workers as an important part of labor protection and labor security supervision. Strengthen labor protection for female workers, forbid employing units to assign female workers to tasks prohibitive to them, and reduce the incidence of occupational diseases among female workers.

(9) Safeguard female workers' labor rights and interests. Make continuous efforts to improve laws and regulations on female workers' labor protection and raise female workers, self-protection awareness through education and training in laws and regulations and knowledge on labor safety and health. Regulate enterprise recruitment behavior, make the signing of labor contracts between enterprises and their employees standard practice, and encourage enterprises with trade unions to sign and fulfill special collective contracts on protecting female workers' rights and interests. Deal with violations of female workers' rights and interests according to law.

(10) Ensure rural women's land rights and interests. Carry out and improve relevant policies on protection of rural women's land rights and interests, and rectify village regulations or villagers' private agreements that violate the provisions of relevant laws and regulations. Set up and improve various rules and regulations on management of rural collective funds, assets, and resources, and push local authorities to work out measures on the distribution and use of land acquisition compensation within rural collective economic organizations, and ensure rural women enjoy gender-equal rights with respect to contracted management of land, use of housing sites and distribution of collective income.

(11) Raise rural women's income. Promote the development of agricultural production mutual-aid and cooperation organizations, expand agricultural production scales and improve operating incomes. Ensure rural women enjoy all government-stipulated agricultural subsidies. Create suitable posts for rural women while centering on the development of rural secondary and tertiary industries, such as primary processing of farm products at their site of production, and rural recreational and tourist activities. Offer training courses on practical and professional skills that are easily accessible to rural women to help both "left-behind women" (women whose husbands have moved to other regions of China to work) and women returning to their hometowns to start their own businesses or find other employment. Encourage financial institutions, enterprises and other organizations to offer, in cooperation with women's organizations, rural women-oriented financial services and relevant training.

(12) Step up support for poverty-stricken women. Develop anti-poverty measures to help impoverished women, and guarantee sufficient supply of living resources. Support poverty-stricken women in taking part in anti-poverty projects in rural areas. Offer subsidized micro-finance and capital and other preferential projects specially to urban and rural poverty-stricken women.

Women in Decision Making and ManagementWomen in Decision Making and Management

(1) Urge the departments concerned to progressively raise the proportion of women among deputies to people's congresses and committee members of the People's Political Consultative Conference (PPCC) at all levels, and also among members of the standing committees of people's congresses and of the standing committees of the PPCC committees at all levels.

(2) Ensure that there is at least one woman in every local government body above the county level, and gradually increase the percentage of women.

(3) Ensure a progressive increase of women leaders in the ministries and commissions under the State Council and government departments at the provincial and prefectural levels.

(4) Progressively increase the percentage of women among cadres holding principal posts in local government bodies above the county level.

(5) Progressively increase the percentage of women among enterprise supervisors, board directors and managers.

(6) Progressively increase the percentage of women deputies to workers' congresses and to congresses of school faculties.

(7) Ensure that more than 30 percent of villagers' committee members and more than 10 percent of villagers' committee directors are women.

(8) Ensure that women account for about 50 percent of residents' committee members.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Enact and improve laws, regulations and policies relative to promoting women's participation in decision-making and management. Urge the departments concerned to take measures to raise the proportion of women or women candidates among people's congress deputies, PPCC committee members, and members of villagers' committees and residents' committees.

(2) Create a sound social environment for women's participation in decision-making and management. Use various forms of publicity to raise the gender equality awareness among the general public and enhance their awareness of the important role that women play in promoting democracy and the rule by law, and in the harmonious development of men and women.

(3) Raise women's awareness of and their ability in participating in decision-making and management. Organize publicity and training programs to help women raise such awareness and ability, and encourage and guide their active participation in decision-making and management. Ensure women cadres' training opportunities and strengthen training of grassroots cadres to improve their political and cultural qualities as well as their decision-making and management capabilities.

(4) Improve personnel and civil servant management systems. Uphold the principle of "democracy, openness, competition and selecting the best" in the selection, appointment and promotion of cadres, and ensure that there is no discrimination against women. Strengthen supervision of the recruitment, training, appraisal, commendation, exchange and promotion of civil servants to ensure women's equal rights are being upheld.

(5) Strengthen the training and selection of cadres from among women. Implement requirements in relevant regulations and policies on the training, selection and posting of women cadres. Provide opportunities, through training or exchange, for a certain proportion of women cadres to take up head posts and positions at key departments. Pay attention to the selection of women cadres from grassroots departments and production frontlines. Steadily increase the proportion of women in reserve cadre teams.

(6) Encourage women's participation in enterprise operation and management. Deepen reform of the enterprise personnel system and uphold the selection and appointment principle of "openness, transparency, and selecting the best" to enable more women to become supervisors, board directors or managers through recommendation, public recruitment, democratic election and competition.

(7) Promote women's wide participation in grassroots democratic management. Improve the democratic election system of villagers' committees and residents' committees to create favorable conditions for women's participation in grassroots democratic management. Improve the democratic management system of enterprises or public institutions — primarily workers' congresses — so as to ensure that the percentage of women in a workers' congress is proportionate to that in the total work force.

(8) Broaden channels through which women can take part in decision-making and management. Solicit opinions and suggestions from women deputies to people's congresses at all levels, women members of PPCC committees at all levels, and from among female rank-and-filers while formulating important policies concerning public interests and women's rights and interests. Carry out a wide spectrum of activities to encourage women's participation in and discussion of State affairs and to create opportunities for women to participate in decision-making and management.

(9) Promote the influence of women's federations in decision-making and management. Bring into full play the role of women's federations in representing the masses of women, with respect to participation in democratic decision-making, management and supervision of national and social affairs. Invite women's federations to participate in the formulating of women-related regulations and important public policies and pass along the opinions and demands of the masses of women. Accord importance to the opinions and suggestions of women's federations on the training and recommendation of female cadres and talents, and on women's participation in and discussions of State affairs.

Women and the Social SecurityWomen and the Social Security

(1) Improve the urban and rural maternity security systems to ensure that maternity insurance is available in all employing units, and to raise women's level of security at childbirth.

(2) Guarantee the basic medical insurance system coverage of women in both urban and rural areas and steadily promote the level of medical security.

(3) Progressively expand pension coverage of senior women. Continue to expand the old-age insurance coverage of individual urban business people and women without fixed employment, and significantly increase the proportion of women participating in the new social old-age insurance for rural residents.

(4) Increase the number of women participating in unemployment insurance and gradually improve their level of unemployment insurance benefits.

(5) Ensure that work-related injury insurance is available to all female employees who have established labor relations with employing units.

(6) Improve the standards of care services for senior women and expand to more than 90 percent coverage of community-based old-age care services in both urban and rural areas.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Strengthen construction of a legal system of women's social security. Implement the Social Security Law of the People's Republic of China and enact supportive regulations to provide legal security for women to ensure that they enjoy maternity insurance, medical insurance, old-age insurance, unemployment insurance and work-related injury insurance.

(2) Improve the maternity insurance system. Improve the maternity insurance system for urban workers, expand the coverage of maternity insurance and raise the participation rate. Based on the basic medical insurance of urban residents, and the new rural cooperative medical care system, improve the maternity insurance system in both urban and rural areas to make it cover all the urban and rural women.

(3) Ensure basic medical security for both urban and rural women. Steadily improve the security level by expanding the coverage of basic medical insurance for urban workers, basic medical insurance for urban residents, and the new rural cooperative medical care system.

(4) Improve the urban and rural old-age insurance system. Improve the old-age insurance system for urban workers, promote establishment of the old-age insurance system for urban residents and advance the new social old-age insurance for rural residents.

(5) Further improve the unemployment insurance system. Expand unemployment insurance coverage to safeguard unemployed women's legitimate unemployment insurance rights and interests.

(6) Protect women workers' legal rights and interests based on work-related injury insurance. Expand the coverage of work-related injury insurance and strengthen law enforcement to ensure implementation of workers' compensation.

a. improve the social assistance system in urban and rural areas. Establish an assistance standard adjustment mechanism commensurate with the economic growth and general price levels, so as to determine a rational assistance standard, and ensure assistance for women who meet that standard.

b. Mobilize all social forces in providing social assistance. Support and standardize social organizations' and citizens' assistance programs. Encourage social organizations to launch charity activities and mobilize social resources by all means to help needy women.

c. Ensure basic old-age care services for elderly women. Establish and improve the social old-age care service system through increased financial input. Develop non-profit nursing homes in communities, promote the professionalism of nursing staff, and raise the level of community-based old-age care services.

d. Ensure social security for women with disabilities. Allocate subsidies to severely disabled women and impoverished women with disabilities to enable them to pay premiums on social insurances including the new rural cooperative medical care system, urban residents' basic medical insurance, and the new social old-age insurance for rural residents. Guarantee the basic livelihood of poverty-stricken disabled women through multiple channels. Increas and improve welfare institutions and rehabilitation service centers for people with disabilities, and build comprehensive service facilities for the disabled in cities and counties. Promote community-based rehabilitation services for disabled women.

Women and the EnvironmentWomen and the Environment

(1) Further implement the basic State policy of equality between men and women, and build a gender-equal and harmonious environment within the family and in the society.

(2) Ensure that the principle of gender equality is embodied in policies on the environment and development, culture and media, and social administration and family.

(3) Improve the gender-equality supervision and administration mechanism in the media field.

(4) Unfold community-based education and consultation activities themed on marriage and family to establish equal, civilized, harmonious and stable family relations.

(5) Encourage and guide women to be promoters of harmonious families.

(6) Provide home-based care services for children and the elderly to create conditions to make it easier for women to balance their career and family duties.

(7) Comprehensively solve the problem of safe drinking water in rural areas, and reduce harm to women's health from polluted water. Increase to about 85 percent the proportion of rural people benefiting from centralized water supply.

(8) Increase the percentage of sanitary toilets to 85 percent in rural areas, and ensure a rational man-woman ratio of public toilet stalls in urban areas.

(1) Encourage women to be active in energy-saving and emission-reduction drives and to lead a low-carbon life.

(2) Enhance women's capabilities to prevent and deal with disaster risks, and meet their special needs in disaster reduction.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Step up theoretical research and advocacy on the basic State policy of equality between men and women. Integrate gender equality policy research with the research on socialism with Chinese characteristics to enrich the policy's theoretical foundation. Encourage education on the gender-equality policy in Party schools and administration colleges' teaching plans and in training plans for officials at all levels. Publicize the gender-equality policy through various channels and in various forms in communities and families and promote the policy's social influence.

(2) Formulate and implement gender-sensitive cultural and media policies. Make analyses and evaluations of cultural and media policies from a gender perspective to reflect the policies' different influences on men and women. Formulate cultural and media policies that promote harmonious development of men and women and prohibit gender discrimination.

(3) Make more efforts to publicize women's active role in promoting economic and social development. Use all media, including the press, radio, television and film, and also literature and the arts, to demonstrate women's achievements, value and contributions through their participation in and promotion of economic and social development, laying emphasis on women role models, in efforts to inspire among women the spirit of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-strengthening.

(4) Step up positive media guidance and management. Integrate gender awareness into media training programs to ensure that media employees, decision-makers and managers are more gender-sensitive. Improve the media supervision and management mechanism, add gender-awareness supervision contents, and invite gender experts to monitor media activities. Call on the press and advertisers to exert strict self-discipline. Prohibit gender discrimination manifested in media depreciation and denial of women's personal dignity.

(5) Enhance women's ability to acquire knowledge and information through the media. Create conditions and opportunities for women to gain access to the mass media and to learn to use them. Promote media and communication technologies among needy and disabled women, migrant women workers and those in remote rural areas. Encourage civil society and enterprises to help women in remote areas obtain information and services through information and communication technologies.

(6) Create an equal and harmonious family environment. Advocate, through various publicity and education activities, family virtues, including respect for the elderly and care for the young, equality between men and women, harmony between husband and wife, thrifty household management, and good neighborhood relationships. Establish an advanced gender culture and advocate civilized, healthy and scientific lifestyles and equal sharing family responsibilities between men and women.

(7) Invite women to participate in practical family education guidance and publicity activities. Disseminate family education knowledge through various channels and in various forms, and encourage parents to accept family education guidance services and related activities. Encourage women to participate in family education research and promote education results.

(8) Further carry out family education guidance service and publicity activities. Bring into full play the role of traditional and modern media in popularizing family education knowledge to help parents foster scientific education concepts and grasp scientific methods.

(9) Promote the community public service system. Provide family-oriented public services to help husbands and wives better fulfill work and family duties. Develop public nursery services for families with infants and community services for children in both urban and rural areas. Raise the socialized level of household work.

(10) Reduce the harm to women from environmental pollution. Improve the databases for monitoring the environment and health, analyze and evaluate from a gender perspective pollution from drinking water, indoor air, also industrial residues and living environment. Intensify control and management of environmental pollution to reduce its hazards to the environment. Intensify the levels of domestic garbage reduction, utilization and decontamination. Further develop and use clean energy, and improve the energy structure in households. Strengthen protection of women engaged in toxic and potentially harmful work.

(11) Mobilize women to take an active part in ecological development and environmental protection. Carry out, in various forms, multi-level ecological and environmental protection publicity activities to raise women's awareness of ecological civilization and increase their participation in ecological development and environmental protection. Encourage women to participate in the energy-saving and emission-reduction efforts, and to promote green consumption by practicing a low-carbon lifestyle.

(12) Establish and improve a drinking water security system in rural areas. Continue to push forward the construction of water safety projects and centralized water supply projects in rural areas. Strengthen the operation and management of water safety projects in rural areas through designated managerial bodies, intensify water source protection and water quality monitoring, and ensure the projects' long-term effects.

(13) Expand the popularization of sanitary toilets in rural areas. Publicize among rural residents the importance of such practice. encourage local farmers to build their own sanitary. toilets and provide them with more technical guidance and services. Introduce toilet reform into the program for building a new countryside and include reform results into annual appraisals of government work.

(14) Ensure a rational man-woman ratio of public toilet stalls in urban areas. Carry out research from a gender perspective on men-women demands and utilization rate of public toilets when making plans of stadiums and shopping malls, and take into account women's physiological features when determining public toilet stalls.

(15) Reflect gender awareness in disaster-reduction work. Provide necessary assistance and services to women based on their special needs. Improve women's competence in preventing and dealing with disasters through publicity and training, and include women's participation in related work. Strengthen guidance to women in disaster-hit areas on self-help by engaging them in production and employment.

(16) Promote international exchange and cooperation for advancing women's development. Actively implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and other international instruments. Expand multilateral and bilateral exchanges and cooperation. Publicize China's achievements in advancing women's development, and promote Chinese women's influence in international affairs.

Women and the LawWomen and the Law

(1) Continue to improve laws and regulations on gender equality.

(2) Strengthen gender-equality review of the laws, regulations and policies.

(3) Constantly promote women's awareness and capabilities of safeguarding their own rights and interests in accordance with the law.

(4) Crack down on rape, abduction and sale of women, and organizing, forcing, enticing, accommodating and introducing women to engage in prostitution and other criminal offenses that infringe upon women's personal rights.

(5) Prevent and curb domestic violence against women.

(6) Protect women's property rights and interests in marriage and family relationships.

(7) Guarantee women's access to legal and judicial assistance according to law.

Strategies and Measures:

(1) Continue to improve legislation on the protection of women's rights and interests. In view of the acute problems involved in protecting women's rights and interests, formulate and improve relevant laws and regulations to protect women's rights in the spheres of politics, culture and education, person, property, work, social security, marriage and family.

(2) Promote inspection of the contents in regulations and policies that violate the principle of gender equality. Implement Legislative Law stipulations with respect to the filing and inspection systems and procedures of relevant regulations and policies; strengthen, in accordance with the law, the filing and inspection of regulations and policies that violate gender equality, and correct any articles and contents that violate the gender-equality principle in the current regulations and policies.

(3) Guarantee women's orderly participation in legislation. Guide and encourage women to participate in legislative activities through various channels to voice their opinions and suggestions. Expand channels through which women's federations and other women's organizations can participate in legislation and express opinions and suggestions on a wider scale.

(4) Support and cooperate with people's congresses at all levels on monitoring the implementation of laws and regulations relative to women's rights and interests protection, better understand problems arising in the course of their implementation and offer opinions and suggestions for their solution.

(5) Give extensive and thorough publicity to laws and regulations on the protection of women's rights and interests. Strengthen legal popularization, incorporate the dissemination of laws and regulations and legal education on the protection of women's rights and interests into the nationwide legal popularization program, and promote the dissemination of these laws and regulations in urban and rural communities. Carry out law popularization activities through various channels and in various forms targeted especially at women.

(6) Strengthen training on gender theory. Integrate such theory into regular legislative, judicial and law-enforcement departments training courses to raise gender awareness of the personnel of those departments.

(7) Increase women's influence on jurisdiction and law enforcement. Encourage and recommend qualified women candidates to work as people's jurors. Encourage and recommend women with professional backgrounds as special procurators or people's supervisors at people's procuratorates.

(8) Crack down on the criminal offenses of organizing, forcing, enticing, accommodating and introducing women to engage in prostitution. Strengthen rectifying measures, intensify supervision and control, thoroughly investigate and close down places of entertainment that provide pornographic services, and stringently punish perpetrators in accordance with the law. Strengthen comprehensive public order management and encourage people to monitor and report pornographic activities that constitute law violations or criminal offenses.

(9) Strengthen efforts against abduction of and trafficking in women. Adhere to the principle of putting prevention first and combining prevention and control, and heighten the general public's anti-abduction awareness and women's awareness of precaution. Strengthen comprehensive control and intensify efforts to crack down on the abduction and sale of women. Give more help to rescued women to recover physically and mentally and return to society.

(10) Prevent and curb domestic violence against women. Promote legislation on preventing and curbing domestic violence. Step up publicity and education to raise awareness of the whole society of the need and ability to resist domestic violence, and promote the self-protection ability of women victims of domestic violence. Improve the multi-sectoral cooperation mechanism on preventing and curbing domestic violence, and also the working mechanism that integrates prevention, curbing and rescue.

(11) Effectively prevent and curb sexual harassment of women. Establish and improve the legislature and working mechanism on sexual harassment prevention and containment, and strengthen efforts to combat sexual harassment. Employing units should adopt effective measures to prevent sexual harassment in work places.

(12) Safeguard women's property rights and interests within marriage and family relationships. Reflect the principle of gender equality in accordance with relevant laws and regulations when trying cases involving marriage, family and inheritance. When divorce cases come to court, while offering wives just compensation, take into consideration the labor they devote to taking care of their families, their survival and development needs after divorce, and their needs with respect to rearing minor children.

(13) Protect rural women's lawful rights and interests within the villagers' self-governance mechanism. Implement the Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees of the People's Republic of China, and guarantee that women exercise their legal rights in democratic election, decision-making, management and supervision. Governments at township (town) level should make timely corrections should they find provisions contradicting those contained in the State Constitution, laws, regulations or policies, or contents involving discrimination against women or harm to women's lawful rights and interests in villagers' self-governance regulations, village rules or villagers' private agreements submitted to them for the record.

(14) Timely take on cases involving violations of women's rights and interests. Adopt necessary measures, in accordance with relevant legal provisions, during litigation of cases involving women's individual privacy, in order to protect them from being hurt a second time.

(15) Provide women with legal aid according to law. Raise the general public's awareness of legal aid, and encourage and give help to eligible women to apply for legal aid. Expand legal aid coverage and improve the legal aid network. Encourage and support legal aid service institutions, social organizations and public institutions in providing non-profit legal services and aid.

(16) Provide women with judicial assistance according to law. Provide judicial assistance to women in financial difficulties or women who need help due to other special conditions, and defer, cut or exempt their litigation fees. Establish a sound system of assistance for victims in criminal cases and provide State aid to women victims living in straitened circumstances sufficient to guarantee their basic livelihood.