The Study On The Problem Of Chinese Women’s Political Participation In Transition

As we all know, almost half of the world’s population are women. Despite their large differences in the living conditions, women have a common characteristic that they are in a lower position in the politics, economy, society, civilization and other fields to the men. Gender inequality has existed since ancient times, so, in the slave and feudal society, women did not have the basic rights and qualifications to participate in political activities. Since modern times, under the influence of democracy, freedom and equality, the feminist movement began to develop, more and more women began to wake up and participated in a series of political activities to fight for their rights. After a long period of hard work and struggle, today, in the most countries, women have the right to political participation as well. In some countries, women even become the supreme leader, and play an important role in the domestic and international political stage.In Chinese feudal society, male culture and male domination has a profound effect. So, women’s participation in politics is limited to rare cases, such as Empress Wu and Empress Dowager Cixi, which is hard to get rid of the curse of harem interference in domestic affairs. Chinese women as a group boarded the stage of history to call for political participation and put it into action since the modern Western-style democracy was introduced to China, and got to the upsurge after the Third Plenary Session of the11th Central Committee. Since the founding of Chinese Communist Party, the emancipation of women and gender equality became the important goals which were pursued by Chinese Communist Party. After the founding of New China, the "Common Program" which was adopted by the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference has stipulated: People’s Republic of China abolished the feudal system shackles women. Women in political, economic, cultural, educational, social life and other fields have the equal rights with men. Thus, Chinese women’s political participation has strong legal protection. After the reform and opening up, the level of political participation and political status of women in China has been greatly improved, women’s performance and influence in political life are getting better, more and more women began to play an important role in the domestic and international political stage.Since the reform and opening up, China has entered the era of the great socialist modernization. People of all nationalities, from the reality of the primary stage of socialism, taking economic construction as the center, insisting on the four cardinal principles and the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, have made our country becoming more powerful under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. In terms of women’s political participation, our country has established a system of laws to protect the right to political participation of women, women’s political participation have getting some progress in quantity and quality. However, many problems still exist. Firstly, such as low proportion, irrational structure and vague function, many problems have not been resolved; Secondly, the quality and ability of whole women should be further improved; Thirdly, the female gender awareness is still relatively weak, the whole community is also short of advanced gender culture; Finally, legal system about women’s political participation should be further improved.In fact, after China entered the transition period, although the Party and the government has supported the work on women’s political participation all the time, unexpectedly, there are still many problems. By studying its reason, we can find that the social, cultural and institutional are the main factors of restricting the development of women’s political participation. First, our country’s social gender culture, and people’s psychological and social media in general did not create a good social environment for women’s political participation; secondly, the form of society and the system of government hampers the enthusiasm and initiative of women’s political participation; then, the traditional division of labor and division of family roles negates women’s ability and expends large energy; finally, lower educational level and weak psychological qualities of women also affects the process of women’s political participation. Based on the above problems and causes, in order to improve the level of women’s political participation, and promote the development of female political participation, we should take proactive measures to deal with the problem. In generally, we should solve the following issues:First, building a good social and culture environment to support women’s political participation; second, make the legal system more perfect; third, reconstruct the social division of labor and women’s roles; last, improve the whole women’s quality and awareness. Only by solving these issues, we can achieve the real equality between men and women in all aspects of social life, and build a socialist harmonious society.