The Outline of Women's Development in China (2021-2030) has proposed goals and supportive measures, to promote women's employment and entrepreneurship, and to guarantee equal rights and opportunities for women to participate in economic development.
In the process of promoting high-quality economic development, China is upholding employment as a priority. As part of that effort, the country has implemented the Action for Promoting Women's Employment and Entrepreneurship, with the specific aim of promoting high-quality and full employment among women.
In recent years, diverse measures have been implemented, across the country, in an effort to address the employment demands of women, from all segments of society.
One-Stop Services for Higher-Education Students
Tianjin Women's Federation has collaborated with multiple departments to facilitate employment and entrepreneurship for women students at universities, through regular activities and targeted services.
How can job fairs empower higher-education students? A job fair, for women higher-education students graduating in 2026, was held last October at Tianjin Foreign Studies University, in North China's Tianjin Municipality. That job fair, which answered the above question, was co-organized by the Office of Tianjin Municipal Working Committee on Children and Women, Tianjin Women's Federation and several other departments.
The job fair featured a live-streaming studio, and it offered online-recruiting services. The fair also set up several functional zones and provided one-stop services, including employment guidance, entrepreneurship counseling, policy interpretation and career planning. During the fair, experts promoted the fundamental national policy of gender equality among women students, and they helped raise students' awareness of rights protection in the workplace.
Since 2022, the federation has organized outstanding women entrepreneurs and women role models, from all walks of life, to give lectures at universities, to share their inspiring stories, and to help students develop a positive outlook on career and success.
Cultivating Rural Live Streamers
Heilongjiang Women's Federation, Heilongjiang Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and other provincial departments, launched a campaign, in April 2025, to help women, who live in rural areas of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, become live streamers, equipped with comprehensive skills, including live-streaming skills, short-video shooting and editing, big data analysis, and the operation and management of e-commerce platforms.
To date, 411 training sessions have been conducted, and those sessions have benefited more than 26,000 women, from 7,497 administrative villages across the province.
Trainees included mothers with young children, rural women in their fifties, and young people who had returned to their hometowns to start businesses. Through systematic training, they have learned how to transform their smart phones into a new kind of farm tool.
"The training gave me a good understanding of the e-commerce industry, and it boosted my confidence in increasing income through an e-commerce platform," Liu Dongmei, a trainee from Fujin, a city in Heilongjiang, has been quoted as saying.
In Heilongjiang, the farmers-turned-live-streamers have become "ambassadors" of their hometowns. With a smartphone and a microphone, they have promoted local specialties, as well as beautiful local sceneries, to people across China.
Promoting Parent-Friendly Job Positions
To promote high-quality and full employment among employees of childbearing age, especially women employees, Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, and Shanghai Women's Federation issued a notice, in December 2024, aimed at encouraging employers to designate job positions with flexible working hours, adaptable work styles and family friendly environments as parent-friendly positions.
The positions are to operate under a flexible work system, to allow employers to implement flexible start and end times, allow remote or home-based work, implement flexible leave policies, and adopt performance-based assessments, to help employees manage their work and responsibilities as parents.
By the end of 2025, more than 700 employers, in Shanghai, have provided nearly 3,700 parent-friendly job positions, which have benefited nearly 7,300 employees.
Authorities in several districts of Shanghai have tailored measures to boost the popularity of parent-friendly job positions, which has resulted in the establishment of a parent-friendly support network.
For example, in 2025, Changning District launched a project, which included establishment of a parent-friendly employment mechanism and 10 parent-friendly service providers, and it aimed at encouraging 100 employers to offer 1,000 parent-friendly job positions.
Weaving Path to Employment
To help women find employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and increase their incomes, Guizhou Women's Federation launched "Jinxiu Program," in 2013, to promote development of the traditional, ethnic handicraft industry in Southwest China's Guizhou Province.
The program has since trained nearly 260,000 women. It has also provided subsidies to 2,680 businesses operated by women in the handicraft industry. The program has helped hundreds of thousands of women find employment.
In Danzhai, a county in Guizhou, 23 handicraft bases operated by women, and more than 10 leading enterprises, have provided flexible employment to nearly 8,000 women. Among them, more than 1,200 women obtained stable employment, increasing their average annual income by nearly 8,000 yuan (US $1,142.86).
By 2025, the program covered all nine cities and prefectures in Guizhou, established 20 "Jinxiu Program handicraft counties," and established more than 1,000 prosperity-increasing, innovation and R&D, and skills-inheriting bases.
The program has enabled nearly 500,000 women to achieve flexible, home-based employment. Many embroiderers have become talents, skilled in craftsmanship, preservation, innovation, design, integration, promotion and sales.
Empowering Rural Women with AI
Dozens of rural women in Yijun, a county in Tongchuan, a city in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, are working as artificial intelligence (AI) trainers at Yijun County Aidou Technology Co., Ltd. Although they began from scratch with basic computer skills, they are now riding the wave of widespread AI innovation and applications.
The AI trainers are specializing in data annotation, which involves attributing, tagging and labeling images, audio, texts and videos, to train machine-learning algorithms for better accuracy in understanding and classifying information.
Nearly 60 percent of Yijun County Aidou's employees are women from nearby villages. The AI training has opened a whole new world for the women. They are now versed in cutting-edge AI application scenarios, such as driverless technology and assisted healthcare.
Shaanxi Women's Federation has always been committed to building a sustainable system for local women to enhance their digital skills. In December 2025, the federation signed an agreement, with Xi'an Peihua University, to establish Shaanxi Women's Digital Industry Institute. The institute offers systematic courses — including digital literacy, e-commerce skills, AI tools and gender-equality concepts — aimed at cultivating women talents in the digital economy.
Boosting Employment in Domestic-Service Sector
Gansu Women's Federation has established Women's Domestic-Service Stations, across Northwest China's Gansu Province, to facilitate stable employment for women in the domestic-service sector. Sixty-two comprehensive domestic-service stations have been built throughout the province. The stations provide domestic services, and other services performed regularly by volunteers. The stations also offer vocational training and job matching for local women, as well as rights-protection services for domestic workers.
The stations use a "graduation-equate-to-employment" model, which allows qualified trainees to obtain jobs either in their hometowns, or in quality enterprises in big cities outside the province.
Yang Feng, president of the Women's Federation of Lixian County, says the provincial-level station in Lixian has promoted the upgrading of "Lixian Mei" and "Lixian Dasao," the renowned local labor brands. The county's federation not only helps women find domestic-service work nearby, it also offers "point-to-point" transportation, for more than 300 domestic workers, to Beijing each year.
Ma Xiaoyan, from Shiqiao, a town in Lixian, obtained a job in the county after she completed training offered by the station. "The station is not only a ‘window of people's livelihoods,' but also a development platform for women," says Ma.
Women's federations, at all levels across the country, are paving the way for women's employment. With improvements in the support system, and in the environment for women's development, more women will achieve high-quality and full employment, and contribute their strength to the promotion of high-quality economic development.
Photos from Office of Tianjin Municipal Working Committee on Children and Women, Office of Heilongjiang Provincial Working Committee on Children and Women, Shanghai Women's Federation, Guizhou Women's Federation, Shaanxi Women's Federation and Gansu Women's Federation
(Women of China English Monthly March 2026)
Editor: Wang Shasha
