Progress og Women in China Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Progress og Women in China - Essay Example . Recently it has been in the news for its confrontations with its neighbors over territory, including the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as with another rising power in India, casting light on the growing power of China, and its growing intention to assert itself and its interests all over the world. It is interesting to find out just how women have fared historically and at present in this fascinating country, given the unusual set of historical, economic and cultural circumstances that women there find themselves in, and given the generally fascinating, strange, and multifaceted Chinese society and government (Parthasarathy; Manthorpe; Magistad; Wong; Pei). This paper explores the progress that women have made in various aspects of Chinese society, with emphasis on their progress in their professional careers, and in particular the progress, challenges, key issues and fresh opportunities for advancement by Chinese women in technical, scientific, mathematical and related career f ields. How have women fared in these respects historically? How much progress have they made in the recent past, vis-a vis the general progress that has been achieved in the Chinese national economy over the past few decades? How have the laws and the norms of Chinese society impacted women and their prospects at work and elsewhere? What are the issues that they face moving forward? What are their prospects moving forward, and what are the blocks to those? What tactics and strategies can they put to use in order to create a better future for themselves? (Parthasarathy; Manthorpe; Magistad; Wong; Pei; Amnesty International; Jacobs). II. China Overview China, with a labor pool of about 1.0024 billion workers as of late 2011, has the biggest workforce in the world. This, coupled by a booming economy backstopped by several decades of rapid growth, has propelled China into the ranks of the largest economies in the world, second only to the US by some metrics, and in some metrics already the largest world economy, poised to become even larger and more prosperous moving forward. A tangible result of this is raising prosperity for more and more of China's 1.34 billion population, as evidenced by rising per capita or per person GDP figures, estimated at $8,400 as of 2011. The scale of the country's progress economically is reflected likewise in gargantuan financial figures: GDP of $11.29 trillion dollars as of 2011, ranked third in the world by purchasing power parity metrics; a rate of growth of the economy of 9.2 percent in 2011; an official workforce of about 816.2 million people, greater than the total population of many large countries in the world; a current account balance of $280.6 billion, ranked first in the world; exports of $1.898 trillion in 2011, ranked first in the world; imports of $1.743 trillion in 2011, ranked first in the world; a rate of investment of about 54 percent of total country GDP, ranked second in the world. The range of its industries is summarized below (Central Intelligence Agency): world leader in gross value of industrial output; mining and ore