Beijing +20: Women and Poverty

Progress and Achievements

1、The Chinese government takes measures to reduce and eradicate poverty among Chinese women.

The Chinese government takes action to fight against poverty among Chinese women, ensuring that all Chinese poverty-stricken women share the benefits of the nation's development. The Information Office of the State Council, or China's cabinet, published the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009–2010) on April 13, 2009, which made the commitment to "intensifying efforts in poverty alleviation work so as to smoothly solve the food and clothing problems of the target population as soon as possible, gradually raise their income, and help them shed poverty and make good."

In 2012, the Information Office of the State Council published the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2012–2015), which put forward that "key poverty reduction projects [poverty alleviation projects] will be launched," improving the level of citizens' basic rights of life so as to ensure that the benefits of China's development be shared by all members of society.

Moreover, the Chinese government also brings the reduction and elimination of poverty among women into line with the state plan of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. The Outline of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China (2011–2015) explicitly indicates that all efforts shall be made to "enhance women's ability and participation in economic development and social management, improve women's healthcare, poverty alleviation, labor protection and legal aid."

The Chinese government also stresses anti-poverty programs among rural women, who comprise the main demographic group suffering from poverty. Therefore, the Chinese government formulated a policy to help poverty-stricken women in the National Program for Women's Development (2011–2020), with "more support will be given to women in rural, impoverished places and areas inhabited by ethnic minority group of China […] narrowing the gap between women in rural areas and urban ones on per capita income, quality of life, culture and education, medical and health services and social security" as one of the four basic principles. In addition, the Outline for Development-Oriented Poverty Reduction for China's Rural Areas (2011–2020) and Opinions on Promoting Rural Poverty Alleviation through Innovation Mechanisms (2014) also explicitly indicate that more support will be given to poverty-stricken women, especially those living in China's rural areas.

With an aim of promoting employment among both rural and urban women and of encouraging women-driven economic development, various anti-poverty plans — along with programs on the reduction and elimination of poverty, such as the "Village Development Mutual Aid Fund" and "Small Loan" — were launched by many key Chinese government departments including the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the State Council.

In 2009, a policy on implementing the Fiscal Interest Subsidies to Small Guaranteed Loans was jointly implemented by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the People's Bank of China. According to the policy, about 204.428 billion yuan (U.S. $33 billion) in small guaranteed loans had been distributed by September 2014, while the fiscal interest subsidies to small loans from the central Chinese government and local governments have contributed 14.441 billion yuan (U.S. $2.3 billion), covering and helping 4 million Chinese women to gain access to the small loans.

In 2011, breast cancer and cervical cancer relief projects were financially supported by the special public welfare fund from lottery of the central government under the help of the Ministry of Finance. Every year, 50 million yuan (U.S. $8 billion) is allocated to women with breast cancer and/or cervical cancer in poverty-stricken areas. As of 2013, the financial aid had totaled 1 trillion yuan (U.S. $16 billion). In China, by 2014, a total of 31,077 women either from poverty-stricken families or who are living with illness — which leads to poverty — had benefited from the breast cancer and cervical cancer relief projects.

2、Non-governmental organizations get actively involved in various poverty alleviation initiatives for women

Supported and by Chinese government, non-governmental organizations get actively involved in various poverty alleviation initiatives for women. The All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) gradually carries out such programs, which include the modern agriculture demonstration base of science technology for women and women's green-homeland campaign. From 2012 to 2014, about 666 women's demonstration bases were founded by all levels of women's federations across China, while more than 200,000 foundations in the name of Chinese women and 110 demonstration bases of the "March 8th Green Project" were also established.

Women's federations at various levels conduct training for women in developing agricultural technology, self-employment and the transformation and employment of the female labor force. Moreover, the federations promoted women's training through a number of different projects, which include the "Sunshine Project" (a public-expenditure program to offer pre-departure professional training to rural laborers from grain-producing areas, sending provinces, poor and revolutionary base areas to find jobs in non-farming sectors), the "Train a New Type of Professional Farmers" project, the "Plan for Modern Agricultural Talent Support," the "Double Learning and Double Competition Activities" campaign (a learning and competing campaign carried out in rural areas), the "Yu Lu Plan @ Tengfei Project" (a campaign promoting learning and cultural cultivation among tens of thousands of applicable talents in central and western areas), as well as numerous educational and skill training programs specifically designed for millions of Chinese women.

Additional skill training sessions centered on women were also carried out to enhance their abilities in fighting against poverty. Examples of such initiatives, among others, include the development of the SYB (Start Your Business) Entrepreneurship Training business training program, which was released as part of the 11th Five Year Plan (from 2006 to 2010), targeting women entrepreneurs in rural provinces designated for 50,000 women, giving basic-skill training to 10,000 female agents, providing training for 20,000 cadre women while transferring their employment and focusing on vocational training for cadres from women's federations in 3,000 cities and counties as well as other cadres serving women and children ( also known as the "5123 Training Program," which stands for the key numbers of “50,000 women, 10,000 female agents, 20,000 cadre women and 3,000 cities and counties); and the "Vocational Education and Skills Training for Rural Women."

In the last five years, a total of 5 million rural women and 1 million self-employed women have benefited from these programs launched by the women's federations at all levels. Additionally, non-governmental organizations including the ACWF also paid close attention to the health and overall wellbeing of disadvantaged women, including left-behind women (women whose family left them in their rural hometown to find work in the city) in rural areas, physically impaired women, single mothers, as well as the women with breast and cervical cancer, and HIV, all of whom share one thing in common — poverty. Therefore, jointly sponsored by various social organization — which include the ACWF, the China Women's Development Foundation (CWDF), the China Population Welfare Foundation (CPWF) and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions — many charity projects were launched nationwide, including "Water Cellar for Mothers" (a centralized charity water supply project that focuses on helping people, especially women, in China's western regions to get help with alleviating poverty caused by severe water shortages), the "Revolving Fund for Mothers' New Ventures" (a fund sponsored by the China Women's Development Foundation providing interest-free loans to help women start their own business), "Health Express for Mothers" (a charity project aiming to provide medical treatment for disadvantaged women and children in poverty-stricken areas through vehicles fitted with medical equipment), the "Medical Aid Fund for Poverty-Stricken Mothers with Two Cancers" (referring to breast cancer and cervical cancer), the "Happiness Project," (a charity project aiming to help the impoverished to become financially well-off by providing financial aid and supporting them in starting their own business) and the "Comfortable Housing Project for Rural Single Mothers."

All of the projects aim to create a better environment for raising the standards of living and improving the living conditions of rural women in need, promoting employment among impoverished women and improving the health conditions of women living in rural areas.

3、China has made remarkable achievements in alleviating poverty among women.

Years of efforts on poverty reduction and elimination have brought great contributions and improvements to the lives of many rural Chinese women. Statistics released by the Chinese government show a decline in disadvantaged women from the key counties for national poverty alleviation development, decreasing from 24.2 percent in 2002 to 9.8 percent in 2010. In addition, statistics also revealed that the poverty gap between males and females had been narrowed, where the difference in poverty incidence between women and men dropped to 0.4 percent in 2010, down 2.2 percent from the previous year. This is great progress for women, whose incidence of poverty back in 2002 was higher than that of men by a margin of 0.7 percent.

According to the China's Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goals 2013 Report jointly issued by the United Nations and the Chinese government, among poverty indicators directly related to gender sensitivity, China has already reached its targets in a reduced impoverished population, reduced starving population, universal primary education, narrowed gender gap in primary education, lowered child mortality (children who are under the age of 5), increased supply of safe drinking water and basic sanitation while ensuring that all the Chinese people — including women — will be expected to have obtained fully productive employment by 2015 and will expect to see evident improvement to the living conditions of at least 100 million impoverished people by 2020 thanks to a favorable and supportive environment created by the State.

Problems and Challenges

1、The government's anti-poverty aid policy is still not adequately gender-sensitive.

The Outline for Development-Oriented Poverty Reduction for China's Rural Areas (2011–2020), issued and publicized by the State Council in 2011, focuses on people from ethnic-minority groups, women and children and the physically impaired as the key target groups in the anti-poverty aid policy. However, the goal, tasks and measures in the anti-poverty policy show no special care for women living in poverty. A number of macro-economic and social policies as well as the development plan directly related to women's interests do not take social gender issues into consideration, ignoring women's rights and the special requirements of their specific interests.

Furthermore, despite that fact that the intensifying division among groups of impoverished women magnifies more and more the problems faced by elderly women, those influenced by migration, and those who are unemployed or dispossessed of their land, the majority of policies and plans related to anti-poverty, aid and development lack measures oriented to these groups. This means that most policies intended to tackle issues of poverty and development have treated the poverty-stricken population as a whole instead of provided specific anti-poverty measures for disadvantaged rural women, left-behind women and migrant women.

2、China still lacking in gender-based poverty monitoring and poverty alleviation statistical data

With respect to China's current means of monitoring poverty, gender-sensitive indicators are insufficient and unsystematic, making it difficult for researchers to draw a clear picture of the general state of affairs of women's poverty as well as of its changing circumstances . Moreover, in its assessment of poverty alleviation policies and implementation results, the government lacks a gender-oriented perspective and inadequately distinguishes between genders.

An example of this shortcoming is China's Rural Poverty Alleviation Development Outline (from 2001 to 2010), published in 2006 and 2010 respectively, whose interim report focused on China's poverty alleviation policy and the effects of the policy’s implementation without describing at all the results in poverty alleviation among Chinese women specifically.

3、Social organizations should enhance their strength in women's poverty alleviation and play a leading role in needy women's groups.

Social organizations have much room to improve in tapping their potential and playing their respective roles in anti-poverty programs. Some of the poverty alleviation projects and anti-poverty programs put less emphasis on poverty-stricken women, with most of these projects and programs unable — due to their makeup and implementation system — to take full advantage of women's initiative and creativity.

4、Women are not equal to men in acquiring economic resources.

There is a direct link between poverty-stricken women and their rights and opportunity in accessing economic resources. At present, Chinese women suffer from violation of property inheritance rights, land contract rights and employment rights and simply do not enjoy rights equal to those of men. As for property inheritance rights, many places in China, especially rural areas, are accustomed to following the old tradition of "only males may inherit a father's property." Evidently, in such cases, daughters are denied equal rights in property inheritance. The same is the case with land contract rights in China, where rural women would lose their rights in land contracting and its corresponding economic interest due to gender discrimination or upon change in marital status, after getting married. In addition, there are many other issues — such as less opportunity for women in accessing credit and loans from the bank and the gender discrimination that women face when looking for employment — that remain to be resolved.

5、Unjust resource distribution in poverty alleviation

Following traditional Chinese social and cultural customs and affected by the existing social system, some poverty alleviation projects favor men and make them the lead recipient in resource distribution, which obviously limits impoverished women's rights in acquiring distributed resource equally.

This pattern of distribution, of course, relegates all women to an unfavorable position, while vulnerable female groups — accounting for women from rural areas and remote places, those in ethnic minority groups, women dispossessed of their land, migrated women, elderly woman and those who are physically impaired — are the first to be affected in their ability to achieve equality in rights, resources and related social support.

Countermeasures

1、Strengthening gender-equality awareness in the government's poverty alleviation policies and project implementation

When formulating its macro-economic policy, the Chinese government should pay close attention to women's development needs and resolve structural poverty problems caused by the gender gap. More analysis and assessment should be conducted on the poverty alleviation policies and anti-poverty projects launched by the Chinese government. More additional policies beneficial to rural women, women from ethnic-minority groups and poverty-stricken women from remote areas need to be formulated in the near future.

2、Enhancing gender-based poverty monitoring and its poverty assessment mechanism

China should perfect its gender-based poverty monitoring and its statistical indicator system, where statistics on poverty-stricken people should be conducted based on such factors as gender and age, reflecting women’s poverty status and changing trends through objective facts. Moreover, the government needs to bring gender equality indicators  into its assessment of the poverty alleviation policy and its implementation results, reflecting the achievements in poverty alleviation development and the fruits gained from women's anti-poverty policy.

3、Social organizations need to play their part in poverty alleviation among women, stressing and enhancing women's leading role in fighting against poverty.

The Chinese government should provide favorable conditions for related social organizations while supporting and encouraging them to use their strengths to the fullest extent and to participate in the government’s poverty alleviation programs and projects in different ways. Meanwhile, the Chinese government should empower women by safeguarding their rights and should drive them to play a leading role in the fight against poverty.

In addition, the government should show full respect for the ideas and choices of poverty-stricken women; lend an ear to what they really want; and value their life experience in the planning, implementation, monitoring and assessment of poverty alleviation. Moreover, the poverty alleviation mechanism and model need to be rejuvenated with an aim of enhancing women's participation in poverty alleviation activities, helping them to rebuild their confidence, creativity and interactivity while improving their abilities in a practical way.

4、Promoting poverty alleviation resources geared toward poverty-stricken women

Taking gender, geographical area and ethnic-minority groups into account, the Chinese government needs to promote resources favoring the grassroots, vulnerable groups in the allocation of poverty alleviation resources — ensuring that ethnic-minority groups as well as poverty-stricken women in rural and remote areas benefit from the resources equally and impartially. Creative methods for the management and use of poverty alleviation funds should be explored, among which specific methods should be developed to meet the demands of impoverished women in different levels, thereby allowing the fund to benefit all women fairly and effectively.

The co-authors are associate researchers of the Women's Studies Institute of China, All-China Women's Federation.

(Source: Chinese Women's Movement/Translated and edited by Women of China)