While the gap between men and women’s salaries in China is rapidly closing, women’s overall earnings are still 17% lower, down from 23% last year, according to a 2020 survey, Ecns.cn reported.
On March 8, Women of China, a non-profit website sponsored by the All-China Women’s Federation, and Zhaopin, a recruitment website in China, released a survey report on women’s employment status in China’s workplace in 2020, aiming to help women overcome career barriers, promote rapid career development and promote gender equality in society, the report said.
The improvement in women’s education levels has also contributed to the narrowing of the pay gap in recent years. Remarkably, from the perspective of the educational background of the respondents, the proportion of women with a bachelor’s degree or above is higher than that of men, the report said.
According to the survey, 31% of men and 46.3% of women are at the general staff level, and almost half of women are in basic positions.
In terms of position in the workplace, there are also gender differences. The functional positions such as finance, human resources, administration, and secretary are mostly occupied by women, while the technical positions such as production and processing are more occupied by men, the report said.
During this year’s Covid-19 outbreak, many working women experienced telecommuting. Intuitively, working mothers have more time to spend with their children.
But according to the survey, telecommuting made 40.63% of working mothers feel busier than usual, 46.05% of working mothers feel more productive, and 37.92% of working mothers said telecommuting was easier for their families, the reoprt said.
Working mothers with different educational degrees have different ideas about who will take care of their children when the parents return to work. Overall, working mothers wanted their children to be looked after by their elders or other loved ones, with the highest proportion at 76.8%, the report said.
The data also found that working mothers generally believe that the ideal career status is to maintain the passion for work and the ability to learn as much as physically possible to advance.