Chinese Women Traditional? Think Again
Written by Wang Fangqing Wednesday, December 15 2010
SHANGHAI, China – If you still categorize Chinese women as traditional wives, think twice. Research published in October by the New York-based Center for Work-Life Policy shows 76 percent of Chinese women long for senior management jobs, compared with only 52 percent in the United States.
Claire Jin, 33, is a typical example. After spending 14 years in the United States, she is now working as a product manager for Shanghai at Tencent Inc., a technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, which is best known for developing the nation’s most popular online instant messenger, QQ.
She sees her career goal as clearly as crystal.
“Now I want to be a general manager leading a good team to do interesting projects, and I'm happy that I am well on track of achieving it at Tencent,” she says.
Jin is in charge of QQ International, a tool for foreigners to communicate with Chinese friends or business partners. Though work can be highly stressful sometimes, Jin refuses to become a workaholic. Rather, she is pursuing a balanced life.
“I love my job because it’s new, challenging, and gives me a sense of achievement, but there are many other things in life I would like to experience,” she says, giving examples such as “good food, new places, and new people.” Jin just spent three weeks in India and Nepal on vacation and was deeply fascinated by the exotic charm.
Born and raised in Shanghai, Jin admits that being a traditional Chinese wife has never crossed her mind.
“I have always been told to work hard to achieve my goals since I was a child,” she says.
However, just like in other countries, Chinese career women find it difficult to find and marry a satisfying man. Jin shares the same concern.
“I feel that Chinese men are still uncomfortable with career women when it comes to personal relationships. They want to be more dominant and prefer women playing a supporting role,” she says.
Across China, young women like Jin can be seen almost in every industry, even in heavy industries such as mining and energy, rare in Western society, says Nandani Lynton, professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
“In Germany for example, you don’t see many professional women in big companies, especially in the heavy industry, which is still dominated by male workers,” she says. But in China, “Chinese men have long been used to working with women because Chinese women all started to work after 1949 to survive poverty.”
China’s fast economic development also largely contributes to Chinese women’s growing ambition.
“There are so many opportunities. Domestic companies are growing and foreign companies are seeking to expand and both are very open to hiring and promoting women,” Lynton says.
Another important reason is that Chinese women have more time for themselves than their Western peers, says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of Hurun Report, China’s only rich list producer, based in Shanghai.
“In the Western countries, it's too expensive to hire a babysitter so women have to spend a lot of time with babies,” he says. While in China, working moms either rely on their parents or hire nannies to take care of the babies. A full-time nanny in first-tier cities like Shanghai costs only about 2,600 yuan ($391.70) a month. In the United States, that figure is more likely what parents pay each week.
According to the latest rich list released in October by Hurun, China is home to the most female billionaires in the world.
Eleven out of 20 of the world’s richest women are in China, with Zhang Yin, founder of Nine Dragons Paper, a recycled-paper company, leading the list with a personal fortune of 38 billion yuan ($5.7 billion).
These women, mostly in their 40s, are all making money by building their own businesses instead of through inheritance.
“They all work very hard because they are the first generation of rich people in China,” says Hoogewerf, a veteran of the Forbes rich list.
However, Hoogewerf says things might change with the rising of younger generation – those born after 1990: “I doubt in 20 years if there are still so many prominent Chinese billionaires as their offspring are clearly fond of a more laid-back lifestyle.”
Lynton shares this opinion.
“The younger generation is more into the Western lifestyle and is usually not willing to work overtime,” she says.
Wang Fangqing (Frances Wang) is a freelance reporter based in Shanghai. For the past four years, she has been writing for a variety of English language publications, including Tobacco Journal International, Soap Perfumery & Cosmetics and Securities Industry News, reporting business trends in Asia. A Chinese native speaker, she is also fluent in Japanese and English.
