China View: The Growing Care Economy Continues To Encumber Working Women
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Over the last three decades, the demand for care work has surged due to the country’s aging population and gradually rising birth rates. This has led to the expansion of the “care economy” which includes housework and the care of children, the sick, and the elderly. In China, this care work is predominantly undertaken by women who are largely unpaid for their services. Some have argued that the demands of unpaid care work limit the ability for women to participate in the labor market.
Women on average spend 2 hours a day on housework, roughly three times more than men in the country. When other chores such as taking care of their children and grocery shopping are taken into account, women spend 4 hours a day on these duties. This difference in average daily work hours also suggests that fewer women are employed full time.
Time Spent On Paid and Unpaid work (minutes per day)
Care work within the domestic service market also remains poorly regulated. Workers are inadequately compensated for their services and they are not covered by the existing social security or government welfare system. These workers also face societal discrimination as paid domestic work is considered unskilled and not valuable. Most domestic workers are rural women with no formal contract and have no access to labor rights protections and social security. The workers also have less income to purchase care services, so they are often forced to carry the burden of child and eldercare themselves. How has the government addressed these issues?
During Chairman Mao Zedong’s tenure from 1949-1976, care services and responsibilities were placed under government control. This shift helped to mobilize women to join the labor force, where they would work for state-owned businesses. Being a state employee not only offered long term job security, but also benefits such as maternity leave, childcare, healthcare, subsidized housing, and retirement pensions. Social support for care of the elderly, sick, and disabled were also provided through pensions. “Because workers were employed for life and wage structures were centrally determined and not closely linked to job performance, women did not have to relinquish employment opportunities for caregiving responsibilities”.
However, in 1978 this system was completely uprooted. During this time, the country began to transition from a planned economy, in which the government controlled all economic activity, to a market economy, in which the government played a more limited role. The government began to prioritize economic growth and development over everything else. This transition led to a sharp decline in government and employer support care benefits. As a result, people were now forced to pay for these services. A new pension program was also instituted, in which health healthcare and pensions were largely determined by an individual’s employment status.
This shift exacerbated the adverse consequences of caregiving for those who had to “forego earnings or employment to look after their children, frail parents, and disabled family members”. Policies were also passed such as the Law of Elderly Rights and Security in 1996, which stipulated that adult children were responsible for caring for elderly parents, not the government. Between 1995 and 2003, the number of childcare and preschool programs in rural areas fell from 10,700 to 5,000.
Between 1997 and 2006, the number of publicly funded kindergartens around the country dropped from 157,842 to 55,069. The number of private kindergartens grew dramatically during this time “with their share rising from 13.5% to 57.8%”. This shift from publicly subsidized care services to for-profit and commercialized provision created major accessibility and cost barriers, which disproportionately affected lower-income families.
To address some of these concerns, regulations have been introduced to protect women’s employment and reproductive rights. The Labor Law adopted in 1995 prohibits employers from laying off female employees or lowering their wages for reasons of marriage, pregnancy, maternity leave, and breastfeeding. The Labor Contract Law implemented in 2008 prohibits employers from independently terminating labor contracts with employees who are pregnant, gave birth, or care for a baby.
Under these two laws, all female wage employees are also entitled to job-protected maternity leave. The benefits of maternity leave have also been improved in recent years. The length of paid maternity leave was extended from 56 days to 90 days in 1988 and later to 98 days in 2012. In addition to paid leave, maternity benefits also include a reimbursement of expenses for prenatal examinations, delivery, hospital care and medicine.
However, these provisions do not benefit all employed mothers. Permanent employees in the state sector receive maternity leave benefits, while most state-sector employees on short-term contracts do not get these provisions. The government’s role in eldercare also remains limited to financing and operating nursing homes for the elderly and disabled who have no family members to care for them.
In response to the challenge of population aging, the 12th 5-Year Development Plan for Social Services System for Old Persons (2011-2015) proposed to commodify eldercare services through the development of eldercare markets, non-profit organizations and voluntary service providers. The expansion of paid domestic service and care for the elderly was projected to create 7.1 million new jobs. However, these services are only beneficial to those who can afford it.
While women work nearly as many hours as men in the workplace, care for children and other family members remain primarily their responsibility. Employers are increasingly reluctant to provide workers with proper care benefits, which exacerbates this toll. In urban areas, accessing affordable childcare services remains a major challenge for low-income families. In low-income and remote villages, daycare and preschool programs are mostly unavailable.
This places a large burden on women, particularly poorer women, to care for their families. This also reduces their ability to work full-time and increases “gender gaps in employment, earnings, and mental health”. To address this issue, the government should consider providing and financing care provision. This could include investments in nurseries, kindergartens, and nursing homes. This would help to improve the access and affordability of these necessary services to low-income families in both remote villages and urban areas.
