| Laid-off women to get skills training
2003-08-15
China Daily
A senior official with the All-China Women's Federation yesterday pledged it
would help train 2 million laid-off women in the next five years so they could
find new work.
Helping laid-off women will be one of the priority tasks
of the federation's incoming leading group, federation Vice-President Gu Xiulian
told a press conference hosted by the State Council Information
Office.
The federation's new leading group will be elected at the ninth
National Women's Congress of China, which will begin on August 22 and last for
five days. The congress is held once every five years.
Gu said training
is important because many women looking for new work face a major stumbling
block due to their relatively limited occupational skills and academic
background.
Official statistics indicate that women made up 49 per cent
of the country's 6.81 million people in cities and towns registered as
unemployed.
Since 1998, 2 million women have been employed or re-employed
mainly as a result of the federation's occupational training
programmes.
The federation has been working hard in the past five years
to reduce the rate of female illiteracy and school dropouts and to get more
women to attend higher education, Gu said.
For example, women's
federation branches at all levels have collected 300 million yuan (US$36.1
million) in donations from China and abroad and helped 750,000 girls return to
school after having dropped out.
According to Gu, 43.95 per cent of the
country's students in higher education are female, six percentage points higher
than the rate from five years ago. As a consequence, more Chinese women are
assuming important positions in government departments and
businesses.
But the employment problems of women cannot be solved if they
merely compete for existing positions. Therefore, Gu said the federation will
also encourage more women to start their own business.
For example, she
said, the federation will continue with its small-loan programme, which gave out
small loans worth a total of 950 million yuan (US$114.5 million) over the past
five years and helped over 2 million women shrug off poverty.
Gu said the
federation will fight hard against today's increasing discrimination against
women in the workplace. The Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress, the country's top legislature, is doing some research into this issue
and expected to produce new legislation against it, she
said.
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