Remarkable progress in women's development, report

China has made remarkable progress in promoting gender equality and women's development apart from fast-paced socio-economic development, according to a report issued in Beijing Wednesday, China News Service reports.

The Women's Studies Institute of China held an unveiling conference for the report on Chinese women's development and as well on China's gender equality and Chinese women's development.

The report, the country's first ever, makes an evaluation on China's gender equality and women's development.

The evaluation covers health, education, economic condition, decision-making, family, gender equality and social environment for women's development.

In the report, in 2004, China was overall scored 68.23 points, 2.12 points higher than in 2000. Compared with the year 2000, China received higher ratings in many fields in 2004, particularly in social environment for women's development and education, up 5.45 points and 4.28 points respectively.

Among all the indexes, the rating women's health rose by a large range with death rate of pregnant and delivered women down to 0.0483 percent from 0.0619 percent in 1995.

The rating on education surged to 82.89 percent in 2004 from 1995's 38.77 percent.

In economic area, the proportion of women in various professions rose to 43.3 percent in 2004 from 35.3 percent over ten years ago.

In terms of participation in politics and decision-making, women cadres took up 12.6 percent of the total in 2004 from 1995's 8.1 percent.

Analysis indicates there's no simply correlation between China's ranking in gender equality and women's development and that of its per capita GDP.

The ten administrative regions with the lowest per capita GDP are generally at the bottom in the ranking on gender equality, but the nine with per capita GDP over 16,000 yuan are all out of the top ten.

Though middle-ranked in per capita GDP, regions like Hebei Province are leading in gender equality and women's development in the country.

By People's Daily Online