Women in Chinese Higher Education: Educational Opportunities and Employability Challenges
This study examines the rapidly expanded educational opportunities and consequent employability challenges to women in Chinese higher education over the past two decades of China’s rapid economic development and education development. The first part of th
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Women in Chinese Higher Education: Educational Opportunities and Employability Challenges Zhou Zhong and Fei Guo
Women hold up half of the sky. —Mao Zedong (1968)
Setting the Scene: The Macro Context of Women’s Education in China The development of women’s talents in higher education is both a cause and a product of China’s modernization. The Women’s movement which begun in the Western world in the late nineteenth century has also effected profound changes in Chinese society. As China struggled to transform from a traditional society into a modern nation, Chinese women have become deeply involved in both the initiation and the resultant changes arising from such transformations. Educational development has been a major driving force in the rise of China over the past century. The recent unprecedented progress in education can be seen as both a continuum of this century-long momentum and also a major factoring the economic growth in China’s new era of Reform and Open Door since 1977. The changing role of women students and professionals in higher education needs to be first examined in the context of China’s legal, political and educational systems that protect the basic and evolving rights and interests of women.
Z. Zhong (*) • F. Guo Institute of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 H. Eggins (ed.), The Changing Role of Women in Higher Education, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 17, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42436-1_3
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Z. Zhong and F. Guo
Fig. 3.1 Age structure in China in 1990, 2000 and 2010* (Source: NBS (2011). Note: the population statistical data of 1990, 2000 and 2010 came from the 4th, 5th and 6th national census of China)
Demographic Context China, as the most populous country in the world, has undergone significant demographic change in the past three decades through the promotion of a birth-control policy since the late 1970s (Fig. 3.1). This policy has brought profound educational, economic and social changes to single-child families in the urban areas, gender imbalance with more men than women in the population, and an aging society during rapid economic and social progress. In particular, the size of the school-age population began to decline in 2006 and the college-age population consequently began to shrink accordingly from 2011. This fall is expected to last till 2028 (Yang 2011). From the positive point of view, the female child as the single child in urban areas or usually as one of no more than two children in rural areas has received better support in education, including better opportunities for higher education, a factor which has contributed to progress in gender equality against long-held gender discrimination in family, schools and society at large (Tian and Liu 2014).
Legal and Political Context Rapid progress has been made in women’s welfare in China over the past two decades. In terms of
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