Mom strives to achieve work-life balance

A mother of three is giving everything at home and in the office as she endeavors to gain promotion, earn more money and secure her family's future. Yan Dongjie reports.

When an older colleague joined Wang Yuxiao's company, the 31-year-old felt anxious because the newcomer offered a potential glimpse of her own life in about 10 years.

The prospect was not one she relished, as she doesn't want to be doing the same job at the same salary when she is 40.

The mother of three young boys is desperate to do well at work, gain promotion and earn more money.

To further that aim, in January, she took a job with Miaoshou, an online medical science popularization and online inquiry platform, which offers good prospects and is planning an initial public offering.

"Who does the housework in your family?" Wang said she was not surprised to be asked that question at the job interview as her potential employer needed to know how much time and effort she could devote to her work.

She felt more than capable of getting the post, though, because she shoulders the responsibility of raising her sons, which provides solid motivation.

"I feel fully motivated to work hard, gain promotion and take good care of my children at the same time," Wang said, adding that she knows such tasks are never easy.

The employment gap between men and women has narrowed in the past two years, according to a report about women's working status in China, published last month by Zhaopin, a recruitment platform with about 230 million users.

It showed that 36 percent of female employees work in management positions, while the figure for men is 35.4. The proportion of women in mid-level positions surpassed that of men by 2.6 percentage points, suggesting that women are taking more important posts in the workplace.

Women felt underestimated at work, though, as 77.7 percent believed they were qualified for senior manager posts, while only 53.1 percent of men held that opinion of women's abilities.

One price Wang had to pay for her job was sending her two older boys to stay with their grandparents in the west of Beijing.

The boys, ages 6 and 4, attend a public-interest kindergarten located in the residential compound. The facility was once private and expensive, but it now charges a monthly fee of about 700 yuan ($110) after the government moved to ease parents' burdens by improving public-interest child care.

"Public-interest kindergartens" are those that provide quality preschool education at affordable fees－which are usually capped by the local government－as a part of supportive measures to raise the birthrate.

Last year, more than 48 million children were enrolled in China's 294,800 kindergartens, with nearly 87.8 percent of them at public-interest facilities, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Education last month.

Wang said: "I grew up in a county in Hubei province, and I studied hard for college entry exams, and then came to Beijing and settled down. Studying hard has been my way of improving my living conditions.

"However, my sons were born in Beijing, with access to all the best resources in the country. They deserve to live happier childhoods and not just concentrate on their studies."

Unlike many parents in Beijing, when Wang discusses her thoughts on children's education, she sounds more relaxed than on other topics.

"When I see them entangled with each other by the slide in our living room, or squeezing themselves into one baby's buggy for fun, that's the most beautiful picture in the world," she said.