Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, October 22, 2012

World's biggest men's club

Mao Zedong is often quoted as saying that "Women hold up half the sky." They don't now, nor ever have, held up half the power in China.

Chinese elite politics: It's still a man's world

With a once-a-decade leadership transition set to kick off Nov. 8, many now are waiting to see if another ambitious Chinese female, State Councilor Liu Yandong, can win one of the nine spots at the apex of Chinese power.

Liu

Liu is a smiley 67-year-old with a degree in chemical engineering and a penchant for pearls and red lipstick. Her portfolios include education, sports and cultural affairs. Experts say she is well-connected and state media paints her as a diligent civil servant with a human touch…

This year, Liu is the only female with an outside chance of landing a position at the top, and if she does, she will have made history…

Since the founding of Communist China in 1949, no woman has ever served on the Politburo Standing Committee, the topmost leadership clique where major policy is set. Only two women have served as provincial party secretaries, powerful positions seen as stepping stones to national leadership posts.

Former Vice Premier Wu Yi, known as the ‘Iron Lady’ for her tough negotiating skills and ranked by Forbes as the second most powerful woman in the world in 2007, failed to advance past the Politburo…

‘‘To become a mayor of a big city or a governor of a province you have to be sort of one of the boys, you have to drink a lot and maybe womanize a bit and also be reasonably corrupt,’’ [Willy Lam, a historian at Chinese University of Hong Kong] said. ‘‘There’s no lack of corrupt women in China, but this to-be-one-of-the-boys phenomenon, I think, is holding some promising female cadres back.’’

[Feng Yuan], the Beijing rights advocate, has run training workshops on women’s rights around China. She says aspiring female politicians complain to her about the ‘‘drinking culture’’ in Chinese politics but many say sexual politics also holds them back…

Though China’s communists have done much to improve women’s lives by increasing their access to education, health care and jobs once reserved for men, they have failed to meaningfully increase women’s political participation.

Since the 1970’s the number of women serving in China’s parliament has actually fallen, and less than a quarter of the Communist Party’s members are women…

Liu is seen as a long shot for the Standing Committee but there are a few other women competing for posts on the Politburo, including corruption watchdog Ma Wen and Fujian Party Secretary Sun Chunlan — only the second woman since 1949 to head a province as party secretary…