Women and Education

(A) Efforts and Progress

1. The Government has introduced new regulations and policies to achieve gender equality in education

The Program for the Development of Chinese Women (2011-2020) adopted by the State Council in June 2011 pointed out that China's education should fully implement the principle of gender equality by incorporating gender perspective when developing, revising, executing and evaluating regulations, policies and strategies, ensure women's equal access to pre-school education, compulsory education, high school education, higher education and vocational education, improve the level of lifelong education for women, promote women's participation in community education, continue to eliminate illiteracy among women, intensify technical skills training for women, strengthen theoretical research and women studies in universities, conduct gender-based evaluation of teaching contents and process, raise gender awareness among educators, and achieve gender balance in secondary and tertiary education studies. All these measures play an effective guiding role in implementing the national basic policy of gender equality and promote women's full development. Again, the 12th Five-Year Plan for National Education Development released by the Ministry of Education in March 2011 further proposed to set "comprehensively improving education services and tapping people's full potentials" (including coordinated development of men and women) as the overall objective of China's educational policy for 2020.

2. NGOs have made great efforts to facilitate women's education

In 2010, ACWF issued the Opinions on Implementation of the "Outline of National Medium- and Long-term Program for Talent Development (2010-2020)" to Promote the Development of Female Talents, which proposed that the government double investment in education and training of all types of female talents and advance the governmental training programs including the "Sunshine Project" and the "New-type Farmers' Technology Training" for women's higher participation rate. Women's Federations at all levels also provide rural women with diversified multi-level training sessions on money-making, vocational skills and academic education at 160,000 rural women schools and training centers. ACWF's Women Training Center has a wide work scope covering more than 3,100 counties of 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities). And also, ACWF in collaboration with the CWRC and many other institutions has established 32 women/gender research and training bases in 17 provinces and municipalities across the country. In another case, the China Children and Teenager's Fund, a subsidiary of ACWF, launched the "Spring Bud Program", donating over 1200 Spring Bud schools and funding over 2.4 million poor children by the end of 2013. All local Women's Federations have also made contributions to women education, for instance, the Red Phoenix Project (RPP) launched by the Shaanxi Women's Federation subsidized 4,560 female college students with more than 19 million yuan in total . Other NGOs are also playing an increasingly important role in promoting women's education. Their Training programs are more targeted and specific and show a diversifying trend by shifting from the single facilitation mode to all-directional support and assistance with an emphasis on women's full development. For instance, "Aide et Action" and the "Rural Women" jointly conducted a rural women's literacy project, highlighting the community-based non-formal education model, combined with such social development issues as poverty alleviation, agriculture, women development and social harmony, which has achieved a good social impact.

3. Women's education has improved and significant progress has been made in the disciplinary development of women's studies

Since 2009, China's educational fairness has been significantly improved. By 2012, the average years of women's education have increased to 8.6 years from 7.9 years in 2009; men-women gap in average years of schooling is shrinking year on year, from 0.9 years in 2009 to 0.7 years in 2012. Female adult illiteracy accounts for 7.2 percent of the population aged 15 and over, declining from 7.4 percent in 2008. The proportion of girls in schools at all levels of education is gradually on rise, suggesting boys and girls tend to have equal opportunity to compulsory education. And in 2012, female college students in higher education also account for 51.4 percent of the total enrolment, higher than 50.5 percent in 2009, while female postgraduates increase from 47.1 percent in 2009 to 49 percent in 2012.

In recent years, women's study in universities has made great progress. Under the impetus of Chinese Women's Research Society (CWRS), the number of the national women/gender studies training centers based in universities has increased from 14 to 22; at the same time, a mechanism for recommending outstanding MA/PhD thesis and other research accomplishments has been established to encourage the output of high-quality research results. As for the curriculum design for women's studies, according to incomplete statistics, such a discipline has been set up in a total of 115 colleges and universities ranging from comprehensive and humanities-focused universities to colleges specializing in science and engineering, agriculture, forestry, medicine, arts, sports, etc., extending from municipalities and capital cities to small and middle cities in remote areas, and upgrading from postgraduate study to doctoral research. As of 2013, a total of 440 courses including 270 for undergraduates, 123 for postgraduate and 47 for doctoral students have been developed. These gender courses opened in colleges and universities not only can help students raise gender awareness, but also have trained a number of researchers and educators engaged in women's studies, cultivating a repository of human resources to develop women's study in a sustainable way. Furthermore, A new trend of women and gender studies at universities is to translate research results into legislation or policy proposals, so as to provide a reference for national and governmental decision-making.

(B) Gaps and Challenges

1. There is an insufficient gender equality awareness in education

As for the educational structure, although gender equality has been basically achieved in compulsory education, the gap remains in lifelong education and vocational training. And gender discrimination can also be spotted in some specific policies. For instance, despite of the provisions of equal enrollment in China's Compulsory Education Law amended in 2006, yet their implementation is deviated occasionally by schools of different kinds and at different levels. For another instance, in order to promote universal primary education in some poor rural areas, effective measures are developed in schooling policies to guarantee children's access to basic education, but the policy for girls is still discriminatory, such as "if a farmer's family has three school-age boys, parents must send two for enrollment; but if the family has three girls, they need to send at least one to school." Such a provision will definitely widen the existing gap between boys and girls in their access to basic education in rural areas.

2. There exists gender segregation between secondary vocational education and higher education, and college female teachers and researchers are facing substantial barriers in their career development

According to the 2012 statistics, only less than 50 percent of girls could stay in vocational secondary schools and less than 30 percent in technical schools . Since the curriculum design of vocational education is closely related to the labor market, the female graduates have to work in the unstable and insecure sectors "only suitable for the young". And there is also some kind of gender segregation and bias in curriculum development and course selection in colleges and universities, which not only directly affects female students' equal access to employment opportunities on the labor market, but also results in the unchanged fact of women's marginalization in science and technology. Furthermore, despite the number of female university teachers continues to grow, there is a lack of support for their career development, as evidenced by a mismatch between their proportion and promotion and professional entitlement opportunities, and a bigger obstacle for females to apply for research projects, further studies, academic exchanges, and research funding than their male peers.

3. The discipline of women's studies is still being marginalized in university education

Nowadays in China, only less than 5 percent of universities open up the course of women's studies. Only three women's colleges are approved to recruit undergraduates majoring in women's studies, while other colleges and universities can only offer it as an optional course on faculty's voluntary basis, failing to make it a pillar discipline. Under the existing disciplinary and academic arrangements, postgraduates majoring in women's studies can only be degreed as a sub-discipline rather than an independent discipline. In addition, PhD education lacks of systematic training programs, preventing women's studies from becoming an independent discipline in colleges and universities, which not only directly affects young female scholars' academic enthusiasm but also causes a discontinuity of academic inheritance.

4. Poor rural women have limited rights to education while the mobility-affected girls are suffering an unfavorable condition for development

In China, geographical distribution of educational resources is not balanced in that there is a vast majority of female illiteracy and low education population distribution in rural areas, the number of rural girls entering high school is significantly less than the boys, and their access to higher education less than both rural and urban girls. Since 2001, the country has begun to integrate rural education resources by adopting the "School Reduction for Combination" policy. As a result, the number of primary schools in the rural areas has decreased by 49.3 percent by the end of 2010. Consequently, the quality of teaching was improved, but due to prolonged journey to school, there still exist some potentials problems for girls' travel safety and boarding safety. And also, with the accelerated pace of urbanization, there emerges a large number of left-behind and mobility children, whose living conditions need to be improved.

(C) Suggestions in Response

1. The government should raise awareness in educational policy-making and execution

The government should re-examine and revise the existing educational regulations and policies to eliminate gender discrimination, supplemented with new rules to address the gender-related blind spots in policy-making. In addition, policymakers should engage experts with gender awareness and fully listen to their views and suggestions. Furthermore, legislative or policy approach should be used to set a female representation requirement in educational decision-making bodies, increase the proportion of women in school's executive leadership and top management. It is also necessary to carry out gender equality training to help key government cadres and administrators raise awareness of gender equality and enhance their gender sensitivity, so as to promote harmonious development of both men and women.

2. Efforts should be made to develop a national curriculum criteria for gender equality education at all levels, and provide teachers training to eliminate gender segregation between vocational and higher education

Efforts should be made to incorporate gender equality into the educational system design, develop relevant curriculum and course requirements, and provide training for the educators, educational administrators and all front-line teachers of various types and levels of schools, particularly the senior leadership in all educational institutions for higher gender awareness. In the field of vocational education, we need to double our input into the disciplines with more female students, help women establish a long-term career planning, integrate resources and strengths from the government, institutions, private sector and civil society, and broaden employment channels for women. Governments and universities should develop specific policies to crack down and eliminate gender discrimination in higher education, redesign the evaluation mechanism for female teachers and researchers, give more opportunities to female in project application, and launch female professionals supporting programs, so as to encourage more female to participate in research.

3. Research, curriculum development and institution-building for women's studies should be encouraged

To develop women's studies, we need to break down the institutional barriers concerning curriculum development and academic degree conference by setting it up as a compulsory course at university undergraduate level, and adopting innovative mechanisms to cultivate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary female doctoral and postgraduate students who will engage in gender equality-related work in all social and educational sectors. Educational authorities should establish an independent assessment body and mechanism to measure, evaluate and intervene the gender equality curriculum and teaching. Leadership of colleges and universities at all levels need to be systematically trained on gender equality sensitivity and policy improvement. And training on gender equality research and teaching should be conducted at colleges and universities in an effort to improve research and teaching in this regard.

4. It is necessary to ensure vulnerable women, particularly rural women and girls enjoy their right to education

Vigorously developing China's education, optimizing allocation of educational resources, and further narrowing urban-rural and regional disparities should be regarded as a fundamental way to achieve fairness and justice in education, including gender equality. To help the disadvantaged groups of women, the government should make preferential policies to support their education, enabling them with equal access to development opportunities as men and other women. Besides, specific incentives and protective educational policies should be placed for the other vulnerable groups including non-schooling and dropout girls, left-behind girls and middle-aged and elderly illiterate women, in an effort to narrow down the educational gap between men and women at large.
 
(Women of China)