Research On The Current Problems Of Women’s Political Participation In China

The inequality between men and women has been lasting for such a long time that people even get to be accustomed to it. For thousands of years in feudal society Chinese women had been being in a no-right state, and no mater from practice or theory aspect Chinese women’s political participation had been being almost pure blank. Until modern times, the western democracy, equality and feminism being introduced to China, Chinese women began to pay attention to their own political dilemma, and then started the long journey of fighting for women’s political rights. In 1995, when the fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, “equality between men and women” was announced as a national policy. Women’s political rights have been written guaranteed in the legal level, but we should see that in the real life, women in China still don’t have so many opportunities to exercise the political power or express the political aspirations, and there still was a huge gap between women and men in every aspect. Therefore, this paper took women’s political participation problems in China as the research object, and study on the present situation, causes and the countermeasures deeply. Except for introduction and the conclusion, this paper consisted of three parts:The first part mainly defied the related concepts of women’s political participation and introduced the basic theories about it.First, according to the concept of political participation, defied the concept of the women’s political participation, and summarized the characteristics and the ways of women’s political participation. Second, introduced the basic theories of women’s political participation, including the Marx’s vies of women, the social gender theory and the feminist theories. Third, revealed the significance of women’s political participation. Forth, review the history of women’s political participation in China.The second part mainly listed the current problems in women’s political participation in China, and analyzed the causes of them.First elaborated the current problems in women’s political participation in China: the political awareness of female group is generally low, with common political apathy, as well as low autonomous participation, that is mostly mobilization participation, and the participation degree is also low; in the other hand, the proportion of women’s power participation is also low, with the irrational structure, much fewer principal than deputy, very few in the decision-making layer, and the participation quality is low with weak political influence. Secondly, divided the reasons, causing this situation, into five aspects: first, economic factors, from the macro point of view it is restricted by the current situation of our social economy development, and from the micro perspective, it is influenced by personal economic situation. Second are the factors of system and mechanism. The legal regulations and policies often use some concepts of fuzzy language, like “the appropriate number”, “More and one”, “gradually growth” and so on. And there are no supervisory organizations of specific setting. Both above reduced the conventionality and maneuverability of the law and policies. And there also lack the attentions to the training of women cadres. The third is the traditional gender culture factor. This mode of the gender division of labor which was deeply rooted in people’s brains was the source of the disagreement and negation attitude to women’s political participation and the practical resistance. The fourth are women’s own factors. Women are affected by the menstrual period, pregnancy, perinatal stage and lactation in physiology, and are not conducive to devote to their work, moreover according to the existing family labor division mode, that is women do most of the housework; women are short of time to be social, which leads to lacking social sources. And in the psychological tern, women’ political participation preparations are also insufficient, with weak consciousness of female subject, low confidence, and not enough self cultivation of the capacity of political participation. The fifth is about the education. Neither primary nor higher education has any specific courses for cultivating gender awareness, which made against women’s future in politics.The third part, according to the causes analyzed above, put forward countermeasures to strengthen the Chinese women’s political participation correspondingly.According to the problems existed in Chinese women’s political participation and their causes, we could consider making changes from the following five aspects. First, we should strengthen the opportunity equality of women’s career in the economic field. We shall constantly improve the market economic system, vigorously develop social productive forces, and mobilize all forces to promote the employment of women, such as establishing and perfecting the legislation system, innovation of policies, and to play the role of women’s federations. Secondly, we should perfect the system and mechanism construction of women’s political participation. We should strengthen the conventionality and executive force of the women’s protection law, regulations and policies, establish the enforce supervision system, and heighten the consciousness of gender in the selection and appointment of cadres, especially pay attention to the training of women cadres. Third, we should optimize the culture environment for women’s political participation. We should popularize the relevant laws and regulations on protection of women’s rights and interests, propagate the significance of women’s political participation, make full use of network, media platform to promote equality between men and women of national policy, at the same time the guidance and supervision of media on shaping the image of women should be done, And we should also improve the status of women in family against what like domestic violence. Fourth, we should optimize their own conditions for women’s political participation. We should strengthen the protective legislation for the female three periods to guarantee the income level of women in the special periods, and vigorously develop the socialization of housework, most likely to free women from domestic labor out to help establish a women’s subject consciousness, inculcate female power consciousness, strengthen women’s political literacy to prepare for political participation. Fifth, we should strengthen the advanced sex education. We should offer women a comprehensive, lifelong gender consciousness education. No matter girls or women, at home or in the school, women should all take a guiding education, through adding gender consciousness educational curriculum into courses of each stage of our education.