Twenty women were recently elected to be directors of their
village committees, all in Shaanxi Province's Heyang County, setting a
record for the number of women to have become local rural officials
in a province.
"Our county may have the largest number of female village heads
in the country," said Liu Minlan, chairwoman of Heyang County
Women's Federation, following a national conference on the
matter.
Statistics from the Shaanxi Provincial Women's Federation showed
that in the province's sixth general village election across 27,321
villages at the end of 2006, the female members raised to village
committees numbered 120,000 or 12.2 percent of all total committee
members.
"The number of female directors stood at 291, equaling 1.07
percent of village directors in the province, and for the first
time breaking past the national average of 1 percent," said Yi
Yuchan, Party secretary of Shaanxi Provincial Women's
Federation.
Guo Danzhu, researcher at the Shaanxi Provincial Academy of
Social Sciences, addressed direct elections of village committees
as providing a prime vehicle for women to reach senior management
positions within village organizations.
"The idea that men are more powerful than women is wholly
outdated. So why can't women be directors?" said Liu Duyuan, 74, a
villager in Heyang County.
(China Daily March 6, 2007)