In China’s Modern Economy, a Retro Push Against Women

BEIJING — Fresh out of college, Angela Li was proud of her job as a teller at the state-owned China Everbright Bank — maybe it wasn’t exciting, but it had prospects. After a year and a half she applied for a promotion, along with a male colleague who had joined with her.

He got it. She did not.

“Our boss came to talk to me afterwards,” said Ms. Li, a 25-year-old with scraped-back hair and a quiet gaze. “He said, ‘It’s good that you girls take your work seriously. But you should be focusing on finding a boyfriend, getting married, having a kid.’ ”

Ms. Li quit.

“I could compete in terms of ability, but not in terms of gender,” she said.

China is often held up as a model for women in Asia. Women made great strides in the early decades of Communist rule, and the government has taken pains to portray women as equal to men, starting with Chairman Mao’s declaration that women “hold up half the sky.”

More recently, as China has shifted to a market economy, admiring reports of “wonder women,” often promulgated by state media, suggest that Chinese women have made it in business.

Inside the top 300 companies in China, women make up fewer than one in 10 board members.

Share of women on corporate boards

Norway

35.5%

OBX

France

“Females act quite differently, bringing diversity and ideological pluralism,” Ming Guozhen, a deputy general manager, wrote in a faxed reply to questions. “To some degree, this contributes to more reasonable decisions and reducing risk.”

Haier’s two women directors may also be more attuned to the company’s customers.

“Women are the biggest consumers and are in charge of finance in the home, so they can express consumers’ opinions better,” Ms. Ming said.

Some companies not listed on the CSI 300, including the Internet giants Baidu and Alibaba, also have more women in top positions.

Those women often find themselves on a lonely frontier.

Fu Xin, 32, an architect who designs car dealerships for a German company, says she rarely meets women at her level.

“It’s all men,” she said. “When clients come up to me at the airport or the dealership they often look past me for the boss.”

But the attitudes of the successful women she has encountered are not always much different from those of their male counterparts.

On a recent trip to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, a rare female client, the head of a new dealership, took her under her wing.

“She said, ‘You should do the most important thing in your life now,’ ” Ms. Fu said. “Find a husband.”

Didi Kirsten Tatlow reported from Beijing, and Michael Forsythe from Hong Kong. Zheng Huang and Kiki Zhao contributed research from Beijing.

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