The Studies Of China’s Urban Female Employment Support Policies Based On Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

Social gender is a brand-new perspective to study public policies, whose ideology mainstreaming process has been advocated worldwide. Countries all over the world have put forward the idea to include the awareness of social gender into the formulation of public policies. This research divides female employment policies, since the birth of the New China, into three periods, namely the early years of the New China, the policy collapse and transition period and the reconstruction period of female employment policy support system. Proceeding from the perspective of social gender awareness and adopting Punctuated Equilibrium Theory in the process of formulating public policies as the policy analysis framework, this paper also refers to the ideas related to new economic system transition and system innovation, assorts the public policies related to female employment since the birth of the New China in the perspective of history and introduces legal policies, labor market policies, social security policies, community development policies and enterprise policies guided by the policies and concepts promoting female employment into the policy support system. Through analysis of the policy formulation process, this paper finds out policy changes resulting in the treatment changes of females in the economic participation (employment) field. Through analysis of relevance between different policies guided by policies and concepts, this paper finds out the horizontal interaction relationship between social policies, and learns social public’s perception of the female employment policies and issues related to female employment through field investigation. At last, this paper puts forward policy suggestions to re-establish the female employment social support system in Chinese urban areas from multiple perspectives.In the research process, this paper combines the system analysis and behavior analysis, macrostructure and microstructure empirical method, and regards the transition behaviors of social policies as the time longitude of the research and the various social policies in the same period as the latitude of the research. In terms of the research longitude, this paper mainly reflects the "punctuated equilibrium" of social policies along with the changes of social politics, economic system and social culture. In terms of the research latitude, this paper mainly analyzes the comovement relation of various social policies of the same period. Focusing on the research into system transition, this paper adopts the social public behaviors of system transition as the empirical materials for the analysis of system effect, the establishment of national social policy system as the research’s ultimate purpose and the influence of the policies’ actual effect on the male and female employment field as the materials for the analysis of policy system’s rationality. This research finds out the gender inequality existing in the employment field, which is a major cause for the policy demand of female social support system guided by social gender. The establishment of female employment social support system is conducive to alleviate industrial and occupational gender quarantine and sexualization of employment identity, and promote female occupational development, economic earnings and social and economic position. The promotion of female employment is the basic goal and major content of labor market policies, social guarantee policies, community service policies, nursery and kindergarten policies, childhood education guidance and financial and tax policies. Therefore, the establishment of a female employment social policy support system covering multiple social policies, including law, social security, community service and enterprises policies calls for the awareness of social gender as the basic value concept and the reflection on the failures and successes of Chinese female employment policies since the birth of the New China as the basis, and considering Chinese social, political, economic and cultural situations.This research adopts the dual policy framework theory, namely the major theory of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and the subsidiary theory of system transition and system innovation, at an attempt to explain the long-term process of policy generation, extinction and reconstruction through the two theories. Besides, this paper integrates the perspective of social gender into the analysis of social policies and considers the sexual relations as a factor to judge the rationality of the existence of the policies. Supplemented by the interview data and referring to the investigation data, this paper focuses on both the macro policy transition and the implementation behavior methods of policy subjects. At last, this paper succeeds in designing a policy framework of the social support system for the female employment in line with the national conditions.The conclusion is achieved through the study. In the history of after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the status of Chinese women reached to an unprecedented height, a large part of the reason contributing to the various social policies for promoting female employment and participating social and economic life after founding of China. But at the beginning, all policies had a blind pursuit of equality between men and women and treated men and women in uniform standards. Also, some policies gave "overprotection" to women and even ignored the innate physiology characteristic of female. All these had raised women’s status in society at the same time bearing work pressure beyond gender. However, it must be sure that just because of the establishment of systematic policy system which laid the foundation of concept and policy to improve the Chinese women’s social status. But with the transformation from the planned economy system to market economic system, the previous period of the policy dangers were exposed, which posed a heavy conflict with the value concept in the market economy system. As a result, policy change was inevitable and showed a non-progressive state, particularly appearing a "equilibrium" break state described in the "punctuated equilibrium" theory in related woman policies. Under the influence of traditional culture concepts, women’s employment rights became the victim in the process of economic transformation. The social support system to boost female employment, except for the relevant description in the legal provisions, was in fact fragmented. Under the impacts of social and family pressure, women were forced to leave the social and economic fields or falling into the low-level field of employment. As the broad dissemination and influence of social gender awareness in the world, it provides us with a whole fresh perspective on examining public policy. After the more than30-year reform and opening up, China’s market economy system has entered a stable development trend. At present stage, the social civilization should be further improved, while women’s social status as one important indicator to measure social civilization is also to put on the agenda. Public policy is a spokesman for government philosophy, taking the promotion of women’s economic status as a starting point, then, to improve women’s social status, and is one of the means of the means to promote China’s international image all over the world. In terms of the understanding about the policy process in the continuous "punctuated equilibrium" theory, once the "equilibrium" is broken, inevitably there is a new "equilibrium". However the views from the new institutional economics views to institutional change and innovation tell us that government in the process is inevitably to be a core force to promote the establishment of new public policies by the effort of governments. Based on this thought, this study reestablished support policies to increase female employment, on the basis of vertical and horizontal consideration and the existing policies, taking social gender concept as guidance and the legal security policy, labor market policy, social security policy, community service and corporate policy as support.