Curtailed Careers of Women in China
Women enter the workforce the same time as men but they typically take some time off during their child-bearing years. Instead of being allowed to stay on longer to compensate, they have to step down sooner in China. Women scientists retire at 55, while men retire at 60. I can’t come up with any good reason for why this should be the case. This also tells me that someone should be looking at such policies across the globe.
From the letters to the editor in response to my Q & A with Mille Dresselhaus for Science Careers. Read below:
In the Working Life “Reflections of a woman pioneer” (V. Venkatraman, 7 November 2014, p. 782), Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus points out that women’s careers often pick up steam after their childbearing years. She names a couple of examples of women who don’t want to retire and work well into their 80s and beyond. Yet in China, the statutory retirement age of Chinese female researchers is age 55, a full 5 years lower than that of Chinese male researchers.
The average childbearing age for Chinese female researchers is 30 (1). It is usually women who take care of their young children before they begin kindergarten (at about 3 years old), which prevents the female researchers from spending as much time applying for grants and publishing as male researchers. By the time they are 36 years old, Chinese male researchers have begun to attain better academic titles, publish more papers, and receive more funding (1).
To address this, China has introduced a number of policies to help female researchers deal with childbearing and raising children. For example, the National Natural Science Foundation of China stipulates that male and female researchers can apply for Young Scientist Funds before 35 and 40 years old, respectively (2). The China Association for Science and Technology stipulates that the upper age limit for female winners of the Youth Science and Technology Prize is 5 years higher than that for male winners (3). These policies have considered that female researchers can’t work on the frontlines because of childbearing and raising children. The policies are effective (1, 4, 5); after 40 years old, the gap between male and female researchers begins to narrow. After 46 years old, the percentage of senior titles is even higher among women. But after 50 years old, once again, male researchers begin to open the gap. This is mainly because female researchers have to reduce the number of research projects before the statutory retirement age. To narrow the gap between male and female researchers, we should extend the retirement age for female researchers in Chinese universities.
Chenggang Yan
Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Read the article. html.pdf.