• Women 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.