Gender Inequality in ChinaGender inequality is a big problem still in certain parts of the world. In the middle east there are limited rights and opportunities for the women living there. In China, because of the One Child Policy and other policies issued under the rule of Chairman Mao, there are extreme biases about the need to have a male child instead of the need for a female child. The Chinese people think that it is important to have a male so they can carry on the family name and to look over the parents when they are older. Most of the parents don't realize that the female gender can do the same under certain circumstances.
Because only one child is allowed in each family, there are fines for a second child. Every year, thousands of Chinese female children are aborted and put into orphanages because their family doesn't want a female child. Very few people keep their female children but many always keep their male children. This causes many people to adopt Chinese children, especially to outside countries like the United States of America and other countries with no inequality laws. Even though many children are put into orphanages, they still have a chance at life, and possibly life in a country with greater opportunities. As females leave China, males keep staying. This make an unequal ratio of males to females, eventually resulting in thousands of men who will not marry and thousands of families that will not exist. Because there is only one boy per family and sometimes one female per family, the families spoil them and give them anything that they want. Most of the time, the kids get over weight from eating and not working it off. They are referred to as "Little Emperors" and there are now programs to help them work out daily to prevent and counteract the effects of obesity. Another issue with gender inequality occurs in the life of the adults living in China too. In the workplaces of China, many female people face inequality with opportunities and the pay that they get for working. It is said that females get about 69% of the pay that males get and only 27% of all politicians are female. It is believed that males were stronger in a working environment and every day life. There are also more men than women because of deaths due to discriminatory treatment, in healthcare, food access, neglect, or victims of female infanticide. Some people think that gender inequality in education in China is starting to decrease but others believe the opposite. Stanford University did a test to find out, and found out that certain areas of China had worse effects than others on the issue of gender inequality. In rural areas, there were more people who had a harder time than in the urban areas. China's gender inequality problem is still bad, but is slowly decreasing over time. Right now, China is trying to revise the child policies issued to the Chinese people to solve some of the gender problems. That is just one of the ways that gender inequality is being fixed, but to me it will never truly be fixed. |