Politics 335, Contemporary Human Rights of Women in China

Jasmin Nuara, 9474412

Women in Today’s China

Women are continuously being seen as inferior to men in contemporary China.

This view has not changed for decades past and, will remain to be a prominent view for

quite some time. Women and young girls are subject to cruelties beyond imagination

every minute of everyday in China. The following essay will entail the issue of unequal

labor rights and well as unequal education opportunities. The female population is not

paid the same as the male population; they are raped by co-workers as well as employers,

and work in long and harsh conditions. Women are discriminated against by their

employers if they do not possess a history of education and, families do not wish to send

their female children to school because it is a waste. The essay will also include cruelties

against women such as the trafficking of women, whether it is in the form of prostitution,

the selling of brides, or sex slaves. To add on to the already ample horrors, the essay

includes women’s bodies are controlled and owned by the state due to the One Child

Policy. Women are forced to receive abortions, sterilizations, and close examinations

against their will. Not only is this a violation for pregnant women but also, for their

unborn female fetuses. All three of these human rights issues pose social, economic and,

cultural issues for China. It is very clear that though many of these issues have

ameliorated in the past few decades, they still remain to be prominent and, problematic

human rights issues.

The trafficking of women is a major issue of human rights in China. Everyday,

women are “regarded as objects to be invested in or bartered.”1 The individuals who

1
Gronewold, Sue, Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China 1860-1936. (New York: Haworth Press,
1982) p.37.
suffer the largest forms of sexual abuse2 are identified as “female, they are from poor

families in poor communities”3. Since they are societies’ most vulnerable people4, they

“are abused and exploited, and a proportion are locked into sexual slavery”.5 Sexual

slavery and prostitution are by no means the same term6. They differ greatly from each

other however, the two terms are associated with each other in many circumstances.

Prostitution is defined as “an extreme form of the general trade in women which

included the adoption of daughters and future daughter-in-law, and the purchase of

servants and brides”.7 The Chinese Communist Party, when they were elected in 1949,

“embarked upon a series of campaigns designed to eradicate prostitution from mainland

China”.8 This eradication of prostitution was deemed a success and therefore, prostitution

was no longer a worry for the Chinese Communist party9. Prostitution was left untouched

for nearly three decades after the 1950’s.10 Unfortunately, prostitution has since, made a

strong comeback. Certain “governmental authorities in the PRC have readily admitted

that the phenomenon of prostitution has not only reappeared on the mainland but that it

also constitutes a widespread and growing problem”11. The problem is so bad that “In

fact, it is now considered that new laws and regulatory measures have proved unable to

curb the prostitution business”.12

2
Ibid., p. 3.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid., p. 21.
7
Ibid., p. 37.
8
McLaren, Anne E., Chinese Women-Living and Working. (London and New York: Routledge Curzon,
2004). p. 83.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
 An even more severe form of trafficking of Chinese women is sexual slavery.

Girls and “women who are trafficked are the easiest targets for the sex industry and form

its most reliable sex slaves.13 Although life is harsh for female prostitutes, it is even worse

for sex slaves. Prostitutes receive pay for their services and, may choose to leave (with

difficulty) that occupation if they so wish. With sex slaves on the other hand, it is a

completely different story. These women do not own their own body; they belong to

someone else. These young girls or women, are sold to men locally or internationally to

do with the women as they wish. These women who are sold, can essentially be beaten,

killed, raped, and so on because they are slaves. They are often sold as brides to the

international market. Many “foreigners” such as men from the west like the idea of never

being able to be rejected because they are buying their wife, not courting them. Women

are either sold by their parents to a man to be married, or unwillingly abducted from their

homes, and then sold as brides. The current human rights issue is that this is not right or

just however, there is no law-force to stop this from happening. Neither the buyer, nor the

seller in the trafficking business are paying for their crimes. These individuals get away

with selling or buying women without any punishments or penalizations whatsoever. The

campaigns that China is using in the present day is proving to be a complete failure.14 A

Chinese individual named Zha Jianying who witnessed the failure of the governments’

attempt to eradicate prostitution says:

“Campaingns worked in the fifties, and they worked in the sixties and seventies…

In reformed eighties, however, campaigns became something else… Political

13
Brown, Louise, Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia. (London: Virago Press, 2000). p. 21.
14
Jeffreys, Elaine, China, Sex and Prostitution. )London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004). p. 161.
 movements inevitably lost their hold… By the time the Party decided to fight

against pornography [and prostitution], the crowd appeal and mobilizing power of

official campaigns had further dwindled.”15

It is “international declarations and national legal codes that attempt to outlaw

prostitution or contain its excesses are little more than well-meaning but empty

gestures.”16

The sex industry in modern China is in need of a large amount of women to

satisfy the needs and demands of their customers. The customers come locally but

mostly, internationally from different countries to obtain these girls and women. The big

question however, is how the industry obtains all these young girls and women. One way

to obtain girls for this job is through trickery. An example would be a girl who is

promised a certain job somewhere far or perhaps in another country.17 Once she arrives,

the job is not the one she was promised but instead, “she is forced “to provide sexual

services to fifteen men a day”.18 In other cases, young girls or women are unwillingly

abducted from their homes, and forced to be prostitutes or, sold as brides and sex slaves.

It is common that “girls and young women are taken from poor countries, and from poor

regions, to more prosperous ones”19 where the richer men may purchase them.

Manipulation is also a common case, frequently seen with trafficked girls. Many brothels

prefer to take trafficked girls due to the fact that “trafficked people are easy to manipulate

because they are made dependant upon others”.20 They are constantly being sold into new
15
Ibid., p. 160-161.
16
Louise, Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia. (London: Virago Press, 2000). p. 185.
17
Ibid., p. 20.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid., p. 22.
20
Ibid.
areas where they are unfamiliar with the language, and the people because they have been

removed from their social safety net.21 Although trafficking in regards to the sex industry

is a horrendous issue, it is not the only type of female trafficking in China. There is labor

trafficking as well where women are working long hours, in harsh environments in

sweatshops.

Women’s labor rights, as well as schooling rights have been violated. Many

women and young girls have been exploited, working long hours with little pay in

sweatshops. Other women who possess higher-ranking jobs either do not get the same

pay as the men who hold the same positions as themselves or, employers refuse to higher

them for miscellaneous reasons due to their gender. In regards to schooling, several

human rights issues arise. Although the number of females attending school has

dramatically increased, there are still quite a few who, remain unable to attend school due

to lack of funds, their parents not wanting to send them because of the fact that they are

female, and so on. The “Central concerns of women’s conditions and status became the

topics of several large surveys”22 in 1995.

In regards to women’s labor and work industry, women face many inequalities

and injustices. The problems “women faced such as unemployment … maternity leave”23,

unequal pay and, rejection of hiring. It is a fact that women are paid less than men in

21
Ibid.
22
Chow, Esther Ngan-Ling, Naihua Zhang and Jinling Wang, “Promising and Contested Fields: Women's
Studies and Sociology of Women/Gender in Contemporary China” Gender and Society, Vol. 18, No. 2
(Apr., 2004), p. 165. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149431?
seq=5&Search=yes&term=education&term=women&term=china&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction
%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Deducation%2Bof%2Bwomen%2Bin%2Bchina%26wc
%3Don&item=16&ttl=32588&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doBasicResultsFro
mArticle (accessed December 01, 2009).
23
Ibid.
China. There has been “recent debates about wages in China… of equal pay for

women”24, where Comrade Pai, secretary of the revolutionary committee of Sino-

Albanian Friendship People’s Commune spoke about the oppression of women in the

workforce.25 Some of the men “opposed the idea of women getting equal wages in the

name of equality and the equal pay principle.”26 Comrade Pai said that the men in the

workforce said “they [women] don’t do equal work, they don’t carry loads as heavy as

ours”. This common view of men in China believe that “women are inferior beings

whose contribution to society is minimal”27 Another instance where the human rights of

women are violated is with sweat shops and factories. Women are assigned the physically

straining tasks of small miscellany. In other words, they are assigned tasks that require

close view and precision to accomplish the tasks, such as the wiring of hard drives for

computers. In already dark conditions, women must look closely to wire properly. After a

few years, many of these women go blind. Women are put in factories or sweat shops

with harsh conditions, low pay, and long hours. A woman named Sin Hua was asked a

series of questions about her job in a factory. One question was about work hours, in

which Hua’s reply was “7:30A.M. to 11:30A.M.; 12:30P.M. to 5:00P.M.; 6:30P.M. to

10:00P.M.”28 Another issue is the issue of hiring women. Many employers refuse to hire

women, giving excuses such as maternity leave being too expensive to pay. Because of

the fact that women naturally are the sex that bears children, they are discriminated

against. Many women who are hired and bear children, do not receive maternity leave

24
Broyelle, Claudie, Women’s Liberation in China.( England: Harvester Press Limited, 1977). p. 120.
25
Ibid., p. 22.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Ngai, Pun, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. (Durnham and London:
Duke University Press, 2005). p. 51.
pay. As Gao Yun asid “you get nothing.”29 Male workers, as well as employers have been

known to rape women workers. An example is with Chang Baohua’s factory where a

“male technician was said to have slept with many women; even after the husbands

reported the affair to the factory leader, he still received a high salary and

awards.”30There are no punishments for these men who commit these heinous acts upon

women. In addition, employers are extremely rude to their female employees and those

employees can do nothing about it if they wish to keep a job in order to survive. One

example is with a man named Ying who was interviewing Sin Hua. He was extremely

rude to her, mocking her of not being able to find a job, saying “No? [you did not find a

job?] Really? You are so lazy then?”31and other insults and rude comments. Work

conditions get so bad, that those women who work in electronic industry are often

exposed to “toxic chemicals that change the health of its workers”32One example is a

woman named. A woman named Yan who suffered horrible pains in her body and, at the

age of twenty, she was unable to toil for her long twelve hours of work each day, due to

toxic chemical exposures.33Such cruelties and great issues of human rights need to be

addressed.

The education sector, like employment, has ameliorated since the past however,

many problems still remain. Many young women are still illiterate and, still, have never

attended school. Those who have attended school, either drop out or, do not achieve

higher levels of education. One example is with Siu Hua who’s highest level of education

29
Jieyu, Liu, Gender and Work in Urban China: Women Workers of the Unlucky Generation. (London and
New York: Routledge, 2007). p. 74.
30
Ibid., p. 62.
31
Ngai, Pun, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. (Durnham and London:
Duke University Press, 2005). p. 51.
32
Ibid., p. 169.
33
Ibid., p. 169.
is Middle High School.34 The fact that “the status of women is of only secondary

importance”35 directly leads to the fact that it is not important to educate the young girls

and women of China. It is unfortunate that those who stop the education of young female

children is not only the men of the society, but the very ones who are oppressed, women.

Mothers often refuse to send their female children to school. If women wish “to be

emancipated themselves women must help children to be emancipated”36 because a

women “who oppresses a child will never be able to free herself”.37 It is an unfortunate

fact that many women are unable to attend school due to its high cost. If parents are going

to spend money on the education of their children, they would rather spend it on a boy

who, in the future, will run their household. In 1965, the director of the Department of

Women stated that “nurseries and schools for all, even for a few hours a day, would not

be achieved for twenty years”.38 It is now long since past 1985 and some young women

still have not attended school or if so, have stopped at low levels of education. The

education sector however, has dramatically improved in the past decades and many

young women to attend schools. It is a problem however, that this issue is not fully

resolved, many are still in need of education.

Perhaps the worst of human rights issues, pertaining to Women in china, is the

one child policy. Women are only aloud to have one child. This has tremendous impacts

socially, personally and, even in the workplace. Many women must choose whether or

not to keep their first child if it is a female, or whether to abort or kill it in order to obtain

34
Ibid., p. 52.
35
Broyelle, Claudie, Women’s Liberation in China.( England: Harvester Press Limited, 1977). p. 24.
36
Ibid., p. 104.
37
Ibid.
38
Curtin, Katie, Women in China. (New York and Toronto: Pathfinder Press, 1975). p. 58.
a male heir. Women are also subject to forced abortions and sterilizations. Not only is

this a human rights issues for the pregnant women but also, for the female fetuses.

In 1979, the family planning policy “gave the state control over women’s

decisions in reproduction.”39 It is “women’s bodies that undergo all the processes

imposed like close examination, forced abortion, use of obstetric health services.”40 A

woman named Gao Yun said that her factory is very strict with the one child policy.41 She

said that “if you get pregnant with a problem because of a problem with the woman’s

IUD, that is normal and you will get a free medical abortion, seven days extra financial

allowances. If it is not because of that, you get nothing.”42 It is a human rights issue to be

forced into abortions and sterilizations unwillingly. It is also a human rights issue of

allowing the state to essentially own every woman’s body.

The one child policy is not only an issue at the workplace, but at home as well.

Men and their family to not care about female children. Sometimes they will force

abortions upon the woman if it is a female child or, they might kill the female baby when

it is born. A male heir is the most important thing to the Chinese family in order to keep

the family name going from generation to generation. In some cases, the mother might

decide to abort or kill the baby herself. Mothers want male babies as well in order to

secure their position in the family, as well as higher their status. A fourty-six year old

woman named Hua Liyun gave birth to a baby girl. She said “If it were a boy, she [my

husband’s mother] would have retired earlier to look after him. My status in the family

would’ve been raised as well.”43 The naming of the child usually “is a big event and the
39
Jieyu, Liu, Gender and Work in Urban China: Women Workers of the Unlucky Generation. (London and
New York: Routledge, 2007). p. 74.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid., p. 75.
whole family will be busy n dictionaries”44 however, since Hua’s child was a female

“when it came to naming the child, no one bothered to do that”.45 I this case, Hua was

fortunate that her family did not kill the baby however, it is sad to see such hate and

disappointment towards both the mother and the child for being a female baby.

Abortions are seen as normal, legal, and a human right in China. Although this is

true, many are forced by in-laws, family members, and husbands. Abotion Clinics in

Guangzhou in Hong Kong performs many abortions everyday of women of all ages, at an

all inclusive fee of sixty dollars.46 A gynecologist as the hospital said “I don’t ask for

reasons or hometowns.”47 Most of the doctor in China have mentalities similar to this

where they do not care if it is forced abortions, they do not care about these individual

patients. Forced abortion was condemned as a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg

war crimes tribunal however, not much is able to be done internationally about this

issue.48 It is a horrible thing to know that the female babies who are not aborted will grow

up in a family that despises them because they are not the right sex. It is horrible to know

that hundreds of women are being forced to get abortions due to female fetuses, or be

sterilized because they have already had one child. There is a huge imbalance in the sex

ratio in China due to the traditional preference for sons and the One Child

Policy.49Frankly, it is a fact that “lots of daughters either do not make it into the world or

have a brutally short stay”.50

44
Ibid.
45
Ibid.
46
Jing-Bao, Nie, “Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion”. (U.S.A.: Rowman & Littfield
Publishers, 2005). p. 13.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid., p. 16.
49
Brown, Louise, Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia. (London: Virago Press, 2000). p. 138.
50
Ibid.
 The problems in the body of this essay which include trafficking of women,

unequal education rights, and the One Child Policy pose social, economic, and cultural

issues in China. With an immense male population, there are not enough females to go

around.51 This imbalance of sexes is what leads to kidnapping of young girls and women

to keep as wives, the trafficking of women and selling them as brides, prostitution, and

sex slavery. Social and cultural, issues are that females are seen in a negative way, as

inferior to men. Economically, they are exploited and abused to benefit the economy. The

inequality of women, and the violation of their human rights are issues that continue to

this day and, need to be addressed.

The trafficking of women in any form, unequal work and education rights and, the

One Child Policy, are all human rights issues with detrimental effects on female

individuals in China. Although the Chinese government is trying to put a halt trafficking

of women as sex slaves, prostitutes, and brides, their attempts have failed. The

prominence of the sex industry is strong in China and is a violation of human rights.

Unequal work and education opportunity is showing improvement however, continues to

be a problem in China. Due to the One Child Policy, the two issues are amplified. The

Lack of women and, overwhelming amount of men has caused men to purchase woman

as brides, prostitutes or sex slaves. Because there are so many men to do the high-skilled

and more physically demanding jobs, the women are not wanted and if they are, are paid

extremely low. These human rights issues need to be resolved however, they are all

related to each other. In order to get rid of one, there is a need to get rid of the others.

China is making little or unresponsive attempts to eradicate these problems. It is the job

51
Ibid.
of the international community, as well as China to come together to abolish these human

rights issues.

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