Chinese women hold up half of the sky
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-08-25 08:41

Women and the environment

The Chinese Government has continuously tried to optimize women's living and development environment, to bring their role into full play in protecting and improving the environment, and to enable women to live and develop in a sound environment.

Governments at all levels have actively encouraged women's participation in scientific research, evaluation, planning, designing, supervision and management of the environment. At present, quite a number of women are serving in departments related to environmental protection at various levels, some even taking leading positions, with about 30 per cent of environmental monitoring and law-enforcement officials in the country being female.

Women's rights guaranteed

In the last decade, China has enacted and revised, in succession, the Marriage Law, the Population and Family Planning Law, the Law on Rural Land Contracting, and the Law on Protection of Rights and Interests of Women, and promulgated and implemented over 100 rules and regulations concerning the protection of women's rights and interests, such as the Regulations on Implementing the Law on Mother and Infant Healthcare.

The State has established a national co-ordination group for the protection of women's and children's rights and interests, composed of members from 19 government departments. Some courts have established specialized tribunals to accept and adjudicate civil cases involving the protection of women's rights and interests, and people's jurors from women's federations and other relevant organs are invited by the courts to participate directly in the hearing of such cases.

The State also sets store by increasing the number of female judicial officials and their ratio in the total number.

To ensure that women's legitimate rights and interests are properly protected, the relevant departments of the Chinese Government issued a special notice, stressing that no legal aid institutions, law firms, notarization institutions or grass-roots legal service institutions may decline to handle or postpone without proper reason an accusation, appeal or prosecution that involves infringement on women's rights and interests. Moreover, legal service fees should be reduced or exempted for women in straitened circumstances.

Conclusion

It is obvious to all that great progress has been achieved in the promotion of gender equality and women's development in China over the past decade.

At the same time, the Chinese Government is highly aware that, restricted by the country's limited level of economic and social development, especially in the process of economic restructuring and in establishing and improving a socialist market economic system, China is confronted with new situations and problems in its efforts to promote gender equality and women's development. Chinese women have become increasingly more diversified in their social status, and thus their needs for subsistence, development and protection of their rights and interests also vary.

There is an obvious imbalance in the development of women in different regions, social status and groups; the outmoded conventions and custom of inequality between men and women handed down from China's history and culture have not yet been completely eradicated, and women's rights and interests are still being infringed upon to varying degrees in some areas. There is a long way to go and arduous tasks to tackle to achieve gender equality and promote women's development in China to a satisfactory level.

The Chinese Government will continue its efforts to encourage all social sectors to help promote gender equality and women's development, strengthen its exchanges and co-operation with the United Nations and other international organizations concerned and the governments of various countries, and make active contributions to promoting worldwide equality, development and peace.

(China Daily 08/25/2005 page5)

Close

Model promots vegetarian food More educated, more DINK? Cui Jian: Real, Live and Coming to Beijing

Today's Top News     Top Life News
Taiwan students on mainland given level fees         Economic ties 'key to Sino-Japanese ties'         NPC debates further raising tax threshold         Joint forces storm beaches at climax of drills         N. Korea nuclear talks likely as planned         Temasek close to buying BOC stake - FT	Chinese women hold up half of the sky       Women's rights better guarded by revised law       Fraud charges filed against mother of Michael Jackson's accuser       Kelly Chan joins "Super Girl" judges       S.Korean scientists clone pigs for cancer cure supplements       Poll says nearly 63% Chinese feel bad about Japan