State—Society Relations and Women’s Political Participation

Abstract

The transition from communism to a democratic system based on a market economy has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, appeared detrimental to women, especially in political arenas. China’s post-Mao development is no exception. While the policy of economic reform has resulted in speedy economic growth and a significant improvement in the material life of Chinese people, the reform period has so far remained a kind of ‘dark age’ for women’s political representation. This issue has much wider significance, as we shall see. The proportion of basic-level woman cadres has declined sharply since the early 1980s. In the 1950s, 70 per cent of the villages in rural China had at least one woman head or director, while in the 1990s only 10 per cent of the villages throughout the country have a woman head (Huang, 1992, p. 9). In 1993, women accounted for only about 3.8 per cent of the country’s township administrators, 5.9 per cent of the county heads and 5.8 per cent of the municipal responsible managers (Tao, 1993, p. 101).