在中国，性别不平等仍旧存在
联合国开发计划署亚洲太平洋地区社会性别的人类发展报告今天发布
在过去的几十年中，中国虽然在经济发展上取得了举世瞩目的进步，但这一进步并没有明显改善中国性别歧视的状况。和其它亚太地区国家一样，中国的发展因性别差距而受到影响。在这一地区的女性受制于有限的权力、话语权以及权利。这一限制将有碍于中国未来经济的发展。
以上内容是今天发布的联合国开发计划署《亚太地区人类发展报告 — 权力、话语和权利：亚太地区性别平等的转折点》中的部分主要发现。联合国系统驻华协调代表兼联合国开发计划署驻华代表马和励在发布会上表示：“国际三八妇女节是强调和呼吁性别平等的重要平台。虽然中国在提升妇女地位上已取得重大进步，但我们也意识到，每个国家都或多或少存在性别差距。”
这份报告以推动性别平等政策制定为目标，注重关注经济权力、政治决策以及法律权利三个方面。
据这份报告显示，亚太地区女性的低就业率每年使这一地区损失几十亿美元。据保守估计，在印度、印度尼西亚、马来西亚等国家，当女性的就业率水平提升到和发达国家相同时（70%），这些国家每年的国内生产总值将增长2-4个百分点。在中国，将近70%的女性拥有有偿工作，这一水平远远高出了世界53%的平均水平。这一数据和中国长期较高的发展速度以及工业化进程相符。
报告同时发现，亚太地区女性只拥有很少的政治职位，这一数量比除阿拉伯地区外世界任何地区都少。发展水平也不一定与女性参政水平相符。例如，在日本和韩国，女性只拥有10%的立法席位。在中国，女性人大代表数量从1983年起就在21％左右徘徊，而在农村地区，虽然女性占到了农村劳动力的65%，但处于地区决策地位的女性人数比例只有1-2%。在整个亚太地区，女性仅拥有7%的土地，这一比例在世界大多数地区为20%。
而“失踪女孩”的问题在这一地区尤为突出。这一问题包括男孩数量明显多于女孩，以及女性因对健康和营养的忽视而死亡。据该报告发现，在全球将近1亿的“失踪妇女”中，仅中国和印度就有8500万。这些女性大多死于医疗、营养供应上的歧视性对待甚至完全忽视，或是因为她们一开始就未被允许出生。由于中国存在严重的重男轻女现象，在2005年，中国0－4岁人口中男性与女性的性别比为122:100。
就解决性别差距问题，该报告提出的建议包括制定推动性别平等的政策以及提高女性参政人数比例。在这方面，联合国系统在其所有部门倡导社会性别主流化，通过关注社会性别，尊重人类发展以及以权利为基础的方式，帮助中国达到千年发展目标。马和励在最后说道：“追求性别平等并不是最终目的，它是未来经济和社会发展不可或缺的一部分，因此将继续作为联合国开发计划署在中国以及全球的一项首要任务。”
Gender inequality persists in China
Launch of the Asia-Pacific Regional Human Development Report on Gender
While China has experienced unsurpassed economic development in recent decades, this progress has not been even in achieving gender equality. The country, like its Asia-Pacific counterparts, remains hindered by the presence of a severe gender gap. Women across the region continue to lack power, voice and rights; this void can impede a country's further economic growth.
Those were some of the findings of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored 2010 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report launched today; entitled Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific. "Women's Day is a great platform to highlight gender equality as a powerful investment," said Khalid Malik, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in China. "While China has made remarkable progress in improving the status of women, we know that there is no country in the world which is free from gender gaps."
Aiming to enhance policies toward gender equality, the Report focuses on three areas of interest — economic power, political voice and the establishment of legal rights.
According to the Report, lack of women's participation in the workforce costs the region billions of dollars every year. In countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia conservative estimates show that GDP would increase by up to 2-4 percent annually if women's employment rates were raised to 70 percent, closer to the rate of many developed countries. In China, nearly 70 percent of women are in paid work, well above the global average of 53 percent. This statistic runs parallel to the higher long-term growth and industrialization experienced by the nation.
The Report also finds that Asia-Pacific women hold only a handful of political offices, fewer than anywhere else in the world except in the Arab region. Development level does not necessarily correlate with high political participation for women, either; women in Japan and the Republic of Korea, for example, hold just 10 percent of legislative seats. Female representatives in China's National People's Congress have lingered around 21% since 1983. In rural China, although women make up 65% of the rural labor force, they occupy only 1-2% of the local decision-making positions. Throughout Asia-Pacific, women head only 7 percent of farms, compared to 20 percent in most other regions of the world.
The problem of "missing girls" ―in which more boys are born rather than girls and women die from health and nutrition neglect— is actually growing throughout the region. China and India together account for more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million "missing" women estimated to have died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition access or pure neglect ―or because they were never born in the first place, the Report found. With China's strong preference for male offspring, in 2005, the sex ratio of children under the age of 5 totaled 122.66 (122 boys for every 100 girls born), the highest ratio in all of Asia Pacific.
Putting in place policies which favor gender equality while boosting female political participation are some of the solutions recommended by the Report to help mend the gender gap. In its efforts, the UN system promotes gender mainstreaming in all its programs and adopts gender-responsive, human-oriented, rights-based approaches to China's Millennium Development Goals. "Gender equality is not only an end in itself, but integral for the achievement of further economic and social development, and thus is a continuing priority for UNDP globally and in China," concluded Malik.
