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Since the 1970s the number of women serving in China's parliament has actually fallen, and less than a quarter of the Communist Party's members are women. Also, women typically get shunted into positions considered `women's work,' such as family planning or public relations. In 2009, female cadres accounted for just 11 percent of leadership positions at the ministerial or provincial level, 13.7 percent at the local and departmental level, and 16.6 percent in county-level offices. That was only slightly better than figures for 2000, which were 8 percent, 10.8 and 15.1 percent. In the early days of Communist rule, the wives of Mao Zedong, Lin Biao and Zhou Enlai were all given positions on the Politburo but their tenures did little to pave the way for other women. Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, lead a series of purges that, after Mao's death in 1976, resulted in her being sentenced to death for counterrevolutionary crimes. Though some see Jiang as a cautionary tale against the ruthlessness of power-hungry females, she claimed she was only following orders. "I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite," Jiang told the court. Pre-communist history offers similarly scant inspiration for aspiring female politicians. Annals are rife with scheming concubines who helped unseat emperors by distracting them with carnal pleasures, a perception that Hong Kong University history professor Zhou Xun says still lingers. "Historically, women were quite often seen as trouble, as linked to the downfall of dynasties," Zhou said. The last woman to rule China, the Empress Dowager Cixi who died in 1908, is remembered as a leader who resisted reform and left China vulnerable to Japanese and western powers. Today, the Communist Party's intolerance for grassroots campaigning has left little room for the growth of a feminist movement that could bring women into the streets to demand equal pay for equal work or more female political participation. One of the few independent web forums dedicated to women's issues, Feminst.cn, has been repeatedly shut down by authorities. Liu is seen as a long shot for the Standing Committee but there are a few other women competing for posts on the Politburo, including corruption watchdog Ma Wen and Fujian Party Secretary Sun Chunlan
-- only the second woman since 1949 to head a province as party secretary. Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese politics at the Brookings Institute, says one or two of them are likely to make it
-- a bleak horizon for women's empowerment. But he says he expects more women to push their way into government in the coming 10-15 years as younger women come of age with more education and social freedom than their mothers. Feng says she has noticed more women trying to run as independent candidates at the local government level, suggesting an awakening of political consciousness. "We ought to be even more bold in our questioning and not just ask why there are no women on the Standing Committee but we ought to ask why there are no women competing for the post of Communist Party secretary or for prime minister," Feng said.
[Associated
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