ABSTRACT
There are more than half a billion women in China, over 50 per cent of whom are in full-time employment. The female workforce as a whole contributed 38 per cent of the country’s GDP (8,940 billion yuan) in 2000. However, knowledge about these Chinese women’s employment conditions in general and women’s management careers in particular remains limited. Although a series of equal opportunity legislation has been introduced by the state, the fairness of these regulations and the effectiveness of their implementation are highly debatable (e.g. Dicks 1989; Lubman 1995; Warner 1996b; Keith 1997; Potter 1999). At the same time, China has experienced two decades of rapid social, political and economic change. In particular, the changing nature of the labour market and the shift from a workplace-based welfare to a social welfare system have had a direct impact on the state’s ability to safeguard the rights and interests of female workers in workplaces where the state influence is weak or weakening.
