Essay Example on Women in Agriculture: A Growing Concern

Despite the ever increase in the non-agriculture form of employment, the state of women is feared to worsen even though households receive a substantial amount of income. The situation is perpetuated by employers who have a preference for men than women during recruitment. Women are believed to perform societal roles like caring for children. The increasing number of men leaving for formal employment has left women to be responsible for agricultural farming. Since farming generates lower income than formal employment, women are economically down in comparison to men. Their low economy makes them less powerful and influential in society.

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During the year 1978, china witnessed the change from agricultural farming to industrial set up. The changes lead to the development of many industries making Chinese citizens rely more on the market to generate income. The industries built were privately, and government-owned. Several industries emerged in rural areas promoting market-driven economies. The gender disparity arises since women were losing in marketization. The labor from women was not valued in running the private family enterprise. Male gender was given a priority in starting and running a business as opposed to the female gender.

Another factor that has affected women in employment is the application of certain features by employers when recruiting workers. For instance, workers prefer to use certain traits such as experience and educational attainment. When these characteristics are used, they mostly favor men than women and give men better chances for wage employment as opposed to women. Organizations prefer features that are more inclined to men than women since they consider more productive. Communities in rural settings prefer to invest more in men when it comes to education than women, so features for preferred employees set by employers fit the male population. Physical strength is also a factor when recruiting workers in industries, and because women have less power, they are left out.

Institutions prefer workers who spend less, financially on them. Women are expensive since, legally, they will require to be granted maternity leaves when they give birth. Furthermore, they will demand to be offered minimal working hours, which makes them highly expensive than men. Some cultures hinder women from doing certain tasks, this contributes to unemployment in women. Social obligations like caring for children prevent women from getting formal employment away from their residential areas. Motherhood and jobs have been a stumbling block for Chinese women in getting employment since it is complicated for them to balance work and meeting children's demands.

Women are taking advantage of areas with low male populations; in these regions, there is a shortage of labor from the male population. The industries have no choice but to hire women to occupy jobs preferred for men. China has invested heavily in the development of industries in the regional and local markets; moreover, they have enacted favorable policies that attract foreign investment. Foreign investment has generated job opportunities in urban centers, which promoted market-propelled economic growth. The most male population left their remote villages in search of high well-paying jobs in urban centers hence leaving rural industries to be taken by the females.

The data recorded for the last 20 years has shown that there is a widening gap in income inequality between men and women in china. For instance, the average annual salary for a woman born in an urban setting was 77.5 percent that of men in 1990. But towards 2010, the gap increased to 10.2 percent, with women earning 67.3 percent of men.

Additionally, women residing in urban areas are increasingly leaving employment. The percentage of women employed in the china market was 73.6 percent in 2010, which is lower than other countries like the united kingdom 78.7 percent, France 83.8 percent, and Sweden, which is 87.5 percent. In 2010, The percentage of women employment reduced by 20.3 percent as compared to that of men. Globally, the gender gap in employment is reducing drastically in many countries, but it is increasing in China.

As part of the reorganization strategy of the national economy, China dismissed tens of millions of people who were employed in its state-owned enterprise in 1990. The dismissal affected women greatly since most women were laid off in a more significant percentage in comparison to men. The worst thing which displayed gender inequality openly was the rehiring of women at minimal rates than men who were dismissed from their jobs. Moreover, men retired at the age of 60. women were mandated to retire at the age of 50. This retirement difference further increased the level of unemployment among women in the republic of china. Chinese culture believes that men are supposed to work outside while the primary role of women is to remain within their homes and to rear children. These traditional gender roles forced women to participate in a demonstration demanding for women to leave their employment in favor of men during the period of high unemployment rate. Gender obligations are widening the unemployment gap between men and women in china.

Gender discrimination is another factor that contributes to gender inequality in china. Employers prefer to employ ladies who exhibit the characteristics of being young, beautiful, and feminine. Body features such as comportment, skin tone, weight, height, sex, and age are now factors that are used to divide the labor market. These features also dictate the length of time a woman remains in their occupational service. Women are dismissed from their job when they are nearly approaching thirty years of age; this is because their beauty has faded. Women who quit their job to concentrate on their kids rarely rehired, while others leave their careers to be married before they are termed leftovers by the media.

Chinese women shut out of the biggest accumulation of the real estate

Law discrimination

The china legal system has a lot of flaws, and it works against the women in the society. When a woman is divorced, she ends up losing the wealth she has accumulated to the husband. They are not economically empowered and secure, and these make them endure consistent marital abuse. The homes that are registered under men's names are estimated to be U.S dollar 30 trillion. Approximately 80 percent of the male population owns homes that are registered under their titles as compared to females who own 30 percent. The disparity in homeownership displays that there is a considerable gender gap in China.

Wage discrimination

In terms of educational attainment, Chinese women have exceeded men. However, the advancement in education does not seem to lower the gender gap in salary distribution. The government has offered a wage premium for women. Also, the process marketization and decentralization adopted by the government as part of reforms, have contributed a lot to wage discrimination. From 1987 to 2004, the gender earning variation rises due to a robust sticky floor effect realized among ladies with low educational attainment and low skills. After the reforms era, most employers think women are less efficient, less reliable, and most expensive than male employees due to their reproductive duties. Apart from lowering women's salary earnings, discrimination of women employers negatively influence their commitment to work, job satisfaction, and motivation.

Occupational Segregation

The most prominent contribution to the gender gap earnings in most western developed economies is occupational segregation. Investigation on transitional economies displays occupational feminization can explain a lot concerning gender gap earnings in particular contexts. Occupational feminization and occupational segregation contribute a lot to the gender gap earnings in China. The increase in marketization has made some jobs more accessible to women, which raises gender pay penalties. Women in china are squeezed out of the emerging markets segments with attractive high incomes and elevated status. Segregation and stratification, together with marketization, has worsened the gender inequality. The transition from planned to the market economy has moved gender gaps between non-state and state sector linked jobs to gendered occupational segregation. Women tend to work in the low salary paid industries, occupations, and other areas of economies. Most women are unlucky and fall into an informal sector of employment. Most of these women lose their jobs due to marriage, childbirth, and enormous layoffs from state-owned enterprises (SOEs). When they return to the labor market to search for jobs, they are able to get informal jobs. Once they are recruited in the informal employment, their opportunity of shifting to a formal form sector is minimal. Moreover, the gender earnings gap is rising because of occupational gender segregation.

Motherhood Penalty

The western industrialized nations consider that having young children or giving birth negatively affects mothers' labor force attachments. The research on the women's labor market in china remains inconsiderate to the ever-rising family obligations. Some jobs assigned to the employed women during the period of state-driven privatization and marketization of the social services are affected during maternity. A clique of scholars has begun to investigate the role of family status and the implication of family-related works on women labor market results. Feminist opinion is required to understand how family and state collaborate to develop motherhood penalties in the Chinese nation.

Mothers and married women face huge gender earning gaps; hence they are a disadvantage in society. When women give birth to an extra child, their hourly wage rate decreases by approximately 7 percent. The penalties that arise from motherhood tend to be worst when a woman resides with the parent's in-law and diminished when they opt to live with the biological parents. The state sectors initially offer extra social services and implement gender-egalitarian policies. The recent withdrawal by the government from offering social services shift the shared burden of reproductive work wholly on women, this negatively affected urban women's labor market results. Moreover, the childcare reforms promoted the drastic decrease in child funded programs, which unfavorably affect children and mothers, specifically those in low-income areas.

The withdrawal of support social services of women by the government has clearly shown the boundary line between the private enterprise and government economic sectors. Consequently, women entirely work on household duties. Hence, the status of family among Chinese women is fundamental in understanding the rivalry between their household responsibilities and labor market outcomes. Even with the transformation, the chines working-class women find it complicated to access the state-sponsored child care services. Moreover, they cannot afford to pay privately offered child care services. The complication in obtaining an advance quality, attainable childc...