While most research on the impact of China's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been focused on economics, a report jointly produced by UN agencies and Chinese government departments examines the entry's impact on gender issues.

The newly published report, titled "WTO Accession: Challenges for Women," examines the ways in which China's WTO membership is affecting women's employment, income and status.

The study finds that women in both agricultural and industrial production are being exposed to great challenges brought about by China's WTO accession and the increasingly opening market.

While the traditional social and economic disadvantages women face are still around, WTO entry is believed to have further complicated the situation and made it even tougher to ensure the rights and interests of women.

Incorporating findings from a comprehensive review of literature on the subject and on-the-ground research in five provinces of the country, the report offers some policy recommendations aimed at mitigating the negative impacts brought by economic globalization, and preventing gender inequality from being intensified by the process, according to Ma Xiaohe, director of the Industrial Development Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), who is one of the compilers of the report.

The study was conducted jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the NDRC, and the China International Centre for Economic and Technical Exchange under the Ministry of Commerce.

The involvement of these agencies will likely give the report some leverage in future policy-making in the country.

Along with the opening of China's agricultural market, there has been a trend towards "feminization" in agricultural production, with women constituting more than half of the agricultural labour force since the 1990s, according to the report.

The rapid urbanization process in China has drawn more and more male farmers into industrial sectors.

A 1996 agricultural survey indicated that farming families were mainly engaged in planting and stockbreeding activities. In the two areas, the ratios of women labourers were 51.6 per cent and 75.2 per cent respectively.

The labour-intensive products such as grains, cotton, oil and sugar, however, are not internationally competitive. Their production is gradually being cut, phasing out some woman labourers and negatively affecting their income and social and family status, according to the study.

On the other hand, the report says, the number of woman employed in the labour-intensive production of vegetables and fruit, and also poultry and livestock products, in which China is very competitive internationally, has been on the rise.

But if China's trading partners raise barriers to limit the importation of Chinese livestock products, WTO membership may eventually bring a cut in the number of jobs in the sector.

In another area, township enterprises are going to face increasingly tense competition, and this will make it harder for rural women to find non-agricultural jobs locally.

"The WTO may improve job mobility in the long run, but hurt it in the short term," warns the report.

To minimize the negative impacts on women, it recommends that the Chinese Government, while observing WTO regulations, should strive to negotiate special protection for sectors in which there is a high incidence of women in the workforce.

The government should encourage a broader geographical distribution of labour-intensive agricultural products. It, at the same time, should also seek to prevent importing countries from adopting dumping or protectionist regulations against Chinese exports.

The report concludes that WTO will boost the employment of women in the industrial sector, but mainly in low-wage, labour-intensive and low-skill areas of employment.

Women make up 40 per cent of the industrial labour force in China, and are largely concentrated in two sectors, garments and textiles, which together employ one-quarter of the total number of woman in the industrial labour force.

WTO membership will stimulate growth in the exports of both of these products, creating more job opportunities for women. Women account for 72.38 per cent and 66.69 per cent respectively of the labourers in the garment and textile industries.

As a result of trade liberalization, experts predict that by 2005, Chinese textile exports will increase by 64 per cent, and garments exports by 125 per cent, creating about 5.4 million jobs. That means 3.8 million jobs for women, if the female employment ratio remains about the same.

But, in the short term, capital-intensive industries, characterized by higher productivity and higher wages, will bring fewer new jobs, says the report.

Women are less likely to benefit from the limited new jobs in this area due to their disadvantages in the labour market -- time constraints because of commitments to the household, lower education and less skill training, for example.

On the other hand, for some time after the WTO accession, policy orientation will help facilitate expansion of the employment of women in the service sector. Women are likely to constitute a majority of community service workers.

Community services in the country, however, are still small in scale, isolated and informal. Worse, they are excluded from social-security and labour protection.

"WTO accession will lead to increased competition in the domestic economy, which is likely to push women into low-paid, low-status work," the report cautions.

To cope with the new situation, the report urges the Chinese Government to upgrade its labour law system to better protect the rights and interests of woman employees, particularly those in casual jobs, in matters concerned with wages, labour relations, the resolution of labour disputes and workplace safety.

And finally, the report stresses that "neutral" policies should be replaced with gender-sensitive policies that acknowledge important gender differences.

(China Daily September 22, 2003)