Women’s role in China’s society and economy cannot be understood without examining the dramatic swings in China’s population policies in the past half a century. In the 1950s，China promoted large families as a key to speed industrialization and enhance China’s geopolitical clout. Birth rates rose dramatically and a huge population bulge appeared in the 1960s. Many of those who are now entering retirement come from that generation of runaway population growth. Women in that age group tend to have suffered low living standards and poor education.

Runaway population growth was followed by a firm brake on fertility in the 1970s. A “One Child” policy was introduced in 1979 restricting families to one child each. But，ironically，a decline in fertility had actually started before 1979. The fertility rate plummeted from 5.3 in 1971 to 2.8 in 1978. Over two decades after the introduction of the One Child policy，fertility declined to below replacement rate at 1.7 in 2004^[1]. Fertility is expected to continue its long-term decline in the coming decade.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949，the government’s ideology regarding women is one of full equality with men. Inevitably there are gaps between rhetoric and reality. But much the rhetoric has turned out to be true. Official statistics report that women account for about half the workforce，and their pay is about 80% of that of men’s. Around a third of senior government officials are women，and women held one fifth of the seats of the National People’s Congress in 2002. Women remain，however，a rarity at the apex of political and economic power，with only one female member in the Politburo.

The status of women in China in the coming decade will be affected by three critical trends：urbanization，education and expansion of the manufacturing sector. The rapid expansion of the manufacturing sector has been particularly important as young women with only a high school education or less have flooded the workforce，to take jobs in all the new manufacturing industries. In most labor intensive industries such as garment，shoe and textile，the workforce is almost all women. For example，in Shenzhen，China’s southern manufacturing hub，women outnumber men in the work force. In 2002，four-fifths of the 5 million workers in Shenzhen were women.

China’s manufacturing sector is expected to expand in the next decade. As labor costs rise in the coastal region，labor intensive manufacturing has started to move inland. The average wage in Sichuan，for example，is only one third that of the Greater Shanghai region. The government’s massive investment into transport and communications infrastructure has helped spur this inland migration. With improved accessibility，the interior is being connected to the major commercial and service hubs such as Shanghai and Beijing. Labor demand for less educated and less skilled women in the manufacturing sector will increase in the interior provinces in the next decade.

At the opposite end of the spectrum，the emergence of a megacity like Shanghai is creating strong demand for educated and skilled professionals and knowledge workers. While exact data are unavailable，anecdotal evidence suggests that well educated women are increasingly successful in their careers.

Urbanization is a fast growing trend in China. In recent years，between 15 and 20 million people were urbanized per year，both from rural migration as well as rural areas being “urbanized” through infrastructure developments and the amalgamation of rural centers into urban hubs. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. By 2023，two thirds of the population will be urbanized.

An urban culture means a more liberated culture for women，everything else being equal. Women’s social and economic mobility is much stronger in an urban setting，even if there is no change in traditional beliefs in rural areas. Thus urban households will soon exceed the number of rural households （these urban households will be smaller than rural households，however），even as the size of rural population will be much bigger than the urban population. Many urban households will be either single women or headed by elder women.

Education has proved to be an important “equalizer” of inequality，and it is no exception when it comes to China. In China，however，the impact of education is made the more powerful because an unintended consequence-the rapid decline in population growth. The number of school-age children will drop from 283 million in 2003 to about 129 million in 2023. This shrinking of school-age population means that there will be an even faster increase in education resources per school-age child. Even as the quantity of education is increased for the rising numbers of students，the quality of education will also be improved simultaneously.

The poorly educated （with only a primary school education）