Great Leap Nowhere

Ruth Marcus on Jun 1, 2014

At higher levels, a 2012 study by McKinsey & Company found that although women constitute half of university graduates in China -- an astonishing achievement given the gender imbalance resulting from the one-child policy -- they just accounted for 8 percent of corporate directors. This is slightly higher than the Asian average but scarcely half that of the United States. Bloomberg reported in 2011 that just one of 120 state-owned enterprises, a pillar of the Chinese economy, was run by a woman.

Much of the disparity, in politics and business, appears to be the product of old-fashioned sexism -- a lingering and perhaps even deepening reflection of Confucian paternalism. In the government survey, 62 percent of men and 55 percent of women agreed with the statement that "the field for men is in public and the domain for women is within household" -- increases of 7.7 and 4.4 percentage points compared with 2000.

Some experts see the situation improving -- pointing in particular to the success of women in higher education and the reverberations of the one-child policy, as well-off fathers pass family businesses to only daughters.

"I'm quite optimistic about the future" when it comes to women entering leadership ranks, said Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

Leta Hong Fincher, whose new book, "Leftover Women," describes government-fueled pressure on women to marry by 27 lest they lose out on the chance to wed, takes a more negative view. "The glass has gotten a lot emptier" for Chinese women, she told me.

Either way, one thing is clear: Mao was an optimist.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.