Chinese Women and the Impact of the One-Child Policy

When people think about China, they usually think of rice fields and the Great Wall, and images of crowded cities, people, bicycles and cars. It is rare to think about the country where people are mainly occupied by men and boys, and lacks obvious and surreal women. This has been exaggerated a little, but over the past few decades, people are aware of the amazing imbalance of sex ratio. This policy clearly brought about the unnatural gender imbalance of the country, as the couple uses legal and illegal means to ensure that the only child is his son.

The one-child policy has played an important role in improving the quality of life of Chinese women. For thousands of years girls were in low rank in Chinese homes. However, since the number of children is limited in the one - child policy, women 's parents have begun investing happily. Because it is the only child, women get educated and have more opportunities to get a better job. Side effects of one-child policy have been exempted from heavy responsibility for women to care for many children and families, whereas women have a lot of vacancies to pursue their careers and hobbies It is that. Another major "side effect" of one-child policy is that the traditional concept of sexual roles is weakening. As the only "opportunity" for parents, women should compete with colleagues for better educational resources and career opportunities.

The Chinese government always emphasized that "One-child policy will improve women's ability and improve women's position" (China National Population Family Planning Committee, 2006). There are two causal relationships with this claim. Hong Kong is a special administrative district of the People's Republic of China, but in a city where the social status of women is relatively high, there is never been an one-child policy. As shown in Figure 4, the birthrate in Hong Kong continues to fall further than China's birthrate. Of course, there are many factors that lowers the birthrate in Hong Kong, but I wonder if the only factor that leads to a decline in the birthrate and the rise of women's position is the one-child policy.