Family Planning and Women's Lives in Rural China

International Family Planning Perspectives, Jun 2004 by Hardee, Karen, Xie, Zhenming, Gu, Baochang

Rather than wanting more children, women said people now place a priority on how they can make money to provide better housing and education for their children, particularly their sons. A 29-year-old mother of one son from Anhui noted the custom of helping to provide sons with housing: "I have to work more to make more money for my son. I have to build a house for him and his wife and save for myself for when I'm old." A 44-year-old woman from Jiangsu who has one daughter said "I work in a factory [and make] a good living. I cannot care for more children. If I have more children, my living standard will go down, which won't be good. The children will compete for things like clothes. When I married, I could have two children, but since my family was poor, I only had one. Supporting one child through school is the same amount of money as constructing a cottage. I want better clothes and food."

*Decision-making. Increasingly, women are becoming more equal in household decision-making, according to focus group participants of all ages and from all three provinces. A 40-year-old Jiangsu woman who has one son and has worked as an embroiderer for more than 10 years reported earning more money than her husband. She said, "My position is equal to my husband's. I can spend money and discuss with my husband. My parents' generation fought because they were poor." A 37-year-old woman from Yunnan with two daughters also noted the change in women's roles in the family. She said, "In the past, daughters-in-law had the right only to suffer, not the right to speak. Usually the daughter-in-law is an outsider. In the past she could not participate in making family decisions. Now she can discuss things openly in the family."

Social Welfare Benefits and Old Age Support

Old age support in China has traditionally been the responsibility of families (and particularly sons), but also fell to communities and work units under the collective system. Elderly people without adult children were cared for by the collective with the "five guarantees": food, housing, clothing, health care and burial expenses. Partly in response to the smaller family size caused by the population policy and to the dismantling of the collective system, the government is trying to extend social welfare benefitsparticularly old age insurance-to more citizens; present coverage is available only for residents employed in jobs in the formal sector.11

Among the survey respondents, workers in the formal sector received social welfare benefits not available to agricultural workers, including paid sick leave; maternity leave; old age, health, life, hazard and disability insurance; and a housing allowance. Analysis of the social welfare benefits received by women shows enormous differences by geographic area: Much greater proportions of women injiangsu (23-73%) than of those in the other two provinces ( 1-20%) received social welfare benefits (Table 5). Women in Anhui and Yunnan were virtually unprotected by many social welfare benefits.