The Employment Gender Gap in Urban China: Why Women Benefited Less from China's Privatization Reforms

Christina Jenq

No 2015-08, HKUST IEMS Thought Leadership Brief Series from HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies

Abstract: Dr. Christina Jenq, a post-doctoral researcher with HKUST IEMS, inspects the role of 1990's era reforms to urban Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the widening gender imbalance in urban employment, with males accounting for a significantly larger share of urban employment than females. Based on rigorous econometric analysis, Dr. Jenq postulates that 30-50% of the gender imbalance amongst the urban employed can be assigned to gender-asymmetric industry-level privatization, with the remaining 50-70% attributable to gender differences in labor supply, both on a qualitative and qualitative level. Dr. Jenq cautions against quota-based employment policies aimed at reducing the employment gender gap (as there was scant evidence of gender discrimination found in her analysis), and instead recommends increases in both skill training programs as well as childcare and education benefits to allow more urban women the opportunity to enter the labor force.

Keywords: Chinese state-owned enterprises; Chinese SOEs; Chinese privatization; privatization; SOE reform; gender imbalance; employment gender gap; ownership-specific human capital; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J24 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 4 pages
Date: 2015-05, Revised 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-mac and nep-tra
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