The Discussion of Chinese Women’s Retirement Age
Name: Gao Wenjing Student ID: S08431
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Sekou Conde
Chinese Classical Literature Minzu University of China
2008-2009 Academic Year
Abstract：Gender equality is the aim our country should pursue. Women's right to employment, right to work, and right to choose are the most important indicators of gender equality and social development. Now the inequality in the retirement ages of men and women results in the fact that women’s rights and interests are affected in the distribution of old age pension and in getting the chance of employment. The central government should pay close attention to this phenomenon and take some measures. So some researchers have done some studies about extending women's retirement age, and this paper also analyzes the problem using some methods such as statistics, comparison and so on. In brief, to protect female rights by laws and policies is the only way to improve the situation of women, but there are still a lot of things need to be considered delicately for different people's different demand and benefits, so extending women's retirement age has a long way to go.
Key words: Chinese women; retirement age; policy; adjust
Introduction
These years the discussion of Chinese women’s retirement age has been an hot topic in political，academic and women circles. The policy of retirement has set up in 1958: men can retire at 60, but women retire at 55, and women who do special types of work can retire at 50[1]. The initial purpose of the policy is protecting women’s benefits. Because at that time Chinese women must take care of their babies and do more physical labor, they don’t have enough time and energy to work better, so this policy has play an important role in protecting them. But with the last 30 years reform and fast developing, Chinese women’s working condition has changed a lot，and one-child policy liberates them from family, because of that women can do more and more contribution to the society. Now women are healthier and well educated, they are living longer and more re-employed. They become excellent doctors, lawyers, civil servants, professors, designers and so on. When they are 55 years old, they are full of experience and competence. They should get the opportunity to be promoted, but they must retire, which is unfair. So they feel the traditional retirement system can’t protect their benefits or realize sexual equality, and they want to extend their retirement age. It is time to reckon the policy carefully, because it should change with time and development. So this paper first introduce the current situation and existing problems in Chinese women’s working as background, then analyze some problems in the argument about extending women’s retirement age, finally discuss some possible solutions.
The current situation of Chinese working women and existing problems
Since 1949, the number of employed women in China has been going up steadily. China is convinced that the key to achieving sexual equality is to enable women to take part in development as the equals of men. So after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, women had the equal rights to go to work as men in our society, which was hard to imagine before. In 1949, there were only 600,000 female staff and workers, constituting 7.5% of the workforce; by 1991 the number had risen to 55 million, or 38% of the workforce. Now as many as 350 million women in urban and rural areas have a job, accounting for 45 percent of the total employed population. In urban area, more than 40 million women are employed, taking up 38 percent of the total urban employment (according to commerce ministry statistics). And in the scientific and technological field alone, there are more than 10 million female specialists. Among the professionals in the state-owned enterprises and organizations, women also account for more than 40 percent.[2] So when it comes to the retirement age, it is not a small problem, because it is concerned with“half the sky”.
Moreover, the sphere of women’s employment has grown enormously. With the increasing in the employment ratio of women in society, large numbers of outstanding professional women have emerged in all walks of life, especially since 1979, when China began the economic reform and opening up to the world. Female workers and employees can be found in all sectors of the national economy, in industry, commerce, the service trades, communications and transportation, post and telecommunications, the construction industry, agriculture, forestry and water conservancy, culture and education, public health, scientific research, finance and insurance, and urban public services[3]. It will not only influence these women but also change the economic division, when adjusting the retirement system. Involvement in market economy has brought about a market increase in women’s income. The improvement of women’s economic status has led to the improvement of their status in the family as well as in the society. In modern times, economic, legal, administrative measures have been taken by the Chinese government to ensure that women enjoy equal rights with men in such areas as politics, economy, culture, social affairs and family life; Chinese working women have gained more than before. The situation has been getting much better for women with the development of education and economy in the past several decades. But women say it is not enough.
Relatively or on the surface, things now seem getting better and our society should be more healthy and stable. However, there has been a deep-seated conservatism both in people's inmost thoughts and real life. The inequality between male and female is a very important one. At present, political, economic, social, family and racial discrimination against women continue to exist in some areas to varying degrees. Hence, a significant narrowing of the gap between law and reality remains an important and arduous task for our government and the national community at large. The reform has given new opportunities to women in employment, but it has also brought new problems. Early retirement greatly inhibited women's education and training as well as career development and promotion. If the retirement age was 55 years old, female officials’ and technicians’ chances of getting promoted at the age of 50 would be considerably reduced. For example, in 2003 Hebei province did a research about civil servants’ promotion. It showed us that after that year’s institution reform, women leaders decreased 25%.[4] The main reason is the inequality in the retirement ages of men and women. Because women civil servants should retire 5 years earlier than men, some of them even retire at their forties, which limits their opportunities to be promoted. So women civil servants are discontent, as well as the female specialists. In the science and technology circles compared with male, women have to withdraw from it earlier, and their participation degree is also lower than men. The position is higher, the women proportion is lower. Lots of senior female technicians and senior female officials suffered from early retirement under the excuse of institutional reform. If the traditional retirement system taking effect continuously, the status gap between male and female will be larger and larger.
Furthermore, early retirement resulted in a loss of economic benefit on women’s part. This is because one’s retirement pension was closely related to his/her working age. In this sense, an early retirement meant that women got a smaller amount of pension than men did. So from the changes of income before and after retirement, the rules that different retirement age of male and female in the pension system is unfavorable for women. Except for some low income people, after the retirement, the pension for most female retired employers would be decreased due to early retirement. And women's life expectancy has reached 75.25 years, which is longer than men. [5]So the different retirement age makes the income disparity wider between male and female employee, and cause the waste of human resources. Now it is important to change this unfair phenomenon, the retirement polices are needed to be improved. The above statistics has shown that working women is a large group of population, which can play an important role in our society’s harmony, so their demand and benefits can’t be overlooked.
The argument about extending Chinese women’s retirement age
In August 22, 2003, the ninth of All-China Women's congress, NiuXiaoyu proposed that Chinese women should retire at the same age as men. She is a doctor in the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province, who has got the doctor degree. So she said that day,“For women intellectuals, [...]
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