China says women's rights improving, good example

BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) The position of women in Chinese society, particularly in politics, is improving and other countries should follow China's good example, a senior government official said today.

Decades after Mao Zedong famously remarked that women ''hold up half the sky'', no female has yet made it on to the country's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee although Vice Premier Wu Yi is on the 24-member Politburo and academics continue to point out the inadequacy of women's rights.

A preference for boys and easy availability of abortion has distorted the birth rate, with about 119 boys born for every 100 girls, an imbalance that has grown since China introduced a one-child policy more than 25 years ago to curb the population.

But Huang Qingyi, vice chairwoman of the State Council's National Working Committee on Children and Women, defended China's record and pointed to new and revised laws, saying even the United Nations recognised the country's success.

''They consider that China has achieved obvious results in promoting women's development and protecting their rights and is a model for other countries to use,'' Huang told a news conference.

''A succession of newly enacted and revised laws... have all underlined the protection of rights and interests of women and children,'' added Huang, who is also vice president of the All-China Women's Federation.

Gender equality was enshrined as a ''basic national principle'', Huang said, pointing out that women make up 45 percent of the national workforce -- a proportion that is rising.

Indeed, last year a woman topped a list of China's richest people for the first time, elbowing past two-time leader Huang Guangyu of GOME Electrical Appliances and a coterie of CEOs at old-economy government enterprises.

Newly minted billionaire Cheung Yan, 49-year-old founder and chairwoman of Chinese paper packager Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Ltd, saw her fortune balloon nine-fold to 3.4 billion dollars, boosted by her firm's March initial public offering in Hong Kong.

Yet many Chinese women face discrimination in pay and treatment and it was only in 2006 that commercial hub Shanghai said it would outlaw sexual harassment in rules that authorise lawsuits against perpetrators.

Huang largely avoided mentioning the problems women still face in a society where traditionally they were valued less than men, sold off as wives and not educated.

Women even had their feet painfully bound until the beginning of the last century to make them more attractive to men.

Instead, Huang concentrated on accentuating the positive, such as the 241 women who held provincial or ministerial level leadership positions at the end of 2005, though she did not say what proportion this made up.

Women were now also supposed by law to make up no less than 22 per cent of the largely rubber-stamp parliament, Huang said.

''This is the first time the National People's Congress had made explicit rules for the proportion of women, and further proves and reflects the importance the party and government attach to their participation in high level politics,'' she added.

But Huang ignored a question on whether she thought China would ever have a female premier or president.

REUTERS SZ HS1116