Conclusion

Enacting several policies protecting women’s rights doesn’t transcribe directly to an equal society. The predicament of women perpetuates decades after the policies were initiated. Granted by the constitution, women have more freedom in China——freedom that they should have enjoyed from the very beginning. For example, in the interview with Lu, presented with a scenario where he had to choose between two prospective employees of different gender whose abilities are the exact same, he still leaned toward choosing the man, listing several drawbacks of hiring the woman. The two types of women he mentioned who would potentially impede the company’s progress are older women who aren’t married, and women who just got married because while the former could get married anytime and move to another city, the latter could get pregnant any time. In China, where traditional family values are still ingrained in mainstream ideologies, such dilemmas are very common and inevitable. Lu calls gender biases, “women’s burden[s],” referring to the responsibility of having to bear children.

As Alice Hu wrote in the Harvard International Review, women were “more likely to get laid off, be forced to retire at a younger age, or receive less social support after a lay-off, and were less likely to find re-employment.” Even though there have been changes in women’s role in China, as can be seen in the narratives of Zhang and Jane, there still remain many realistic difficulties when it comes to building a truly equitable society.