With the continuous improvement of women's human rights legal system and the special attention and unremitting promotion from Chinese government, Chinese women's enjoyment of equal rights in politics, economy, culture, society and family has been carried further, and Chinese women are playing even greater roles in different aspects of social life after having made proud achievements in the development of their human rights.

Chinese government attaches great importance to women's participation in political and public affairs, and has formulated concrete policies to enhance women's capacity to participate by setting clear objectives and introducing strategic measures. As a result, a great number of outstanding women have entered organs of power at various levels. At the recently concluded first Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) and the 11th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the proportions of female members in both NPC and CPPCC are 21.33% and 17.7%, and has increased respectively by 1.13% and 1% from that of last year. National-wide, females claim 38% of the total number of cadres. In the Supreme Court, Supreme Procuratorate and component departments of the State Council, there are 27 female ministers/vice-ministers and 241 minister-level leaders, with a 2% increase during the past 3years.

Meanwhile, women's occupation structure is also improving, with continuous widening of their employment scope. In 2005, employed women amounted to 45% of the entire workforce in both urban and rural China. In urban areas, the 6 major industries, namely computer, communications, finance, education, health care and social security employed sixteen million four hundred and fifty-one thousand females, 6.8% more than that of 2003. In order to protect women from employment discrimination due to marriage or child-bearing, the Employment Promotion Law stipulates that no employer should put into the employment contract any content that restricts women's marriage or child-bearing rights. The government also seeks to guarantee women's employment rights by taking such active measures as strengthening law-enforcement supervision and perfecting child-bearing insurance system. To help women set up their own business or seek re-employment, All-China Women's Federation, the biggest national women's organization in China works to provide services such as technical training, employment advising and job placement to laid-off women. In 2005 only, All-China Women's Federation trained one million three hundred and thirty thousand laid-off women and helped eight hundred and fourteen thousand set up their own businesses or get re-employed.

In recent years, Chinese government increased the national financial education funds. Consequently, women's educational level has been raised by a large margin, with a steady increase of the percentage of females in various educational institutions and a notable decrease of the gap between male and female educational levels. In 2006, 46.4% of all China's post-graduates and 33.9% of doctorates were female, with respective increases of 12.3% and 12.4% over 2000. Female adult literacy rate and female youth literacy rate have also reached 83.85% and 94.7% respectively. The male-female discrepancy in average years of education has dropped from 1.3 years in 2000 to 1 year in 2004.

Women's health conditions and life quality have been remarkably improved. Women can enjoy lifelong health care service. Chinese government keeps increasing financial input into maternity and childcare, gradually improving service networks in this regard. The national financial funds for maternity and childcare was RMB 1.88 billion yuan in 2004. Up to the end of 2005, 3021 maternity and childcare institutions have been established. So far, the hospitalized delivery rate in rural China, very low before, has reached above 81%; hospitalized delivery rate of women with high-risk pregnancy reached 98.35%; maternal mortality rate is 47.7 per hundred thousand; average life expectancy of female is 74.1 years.

To reinforce the mechanism for safeguarding women's rights and interests, China established a trans-departmental National Coordination Panel in 2001, which greatly enhanced the association and coordination of different government departments and effectively strengthened the nation's efforts in safeguarding women's rights and interests. So far, 23 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) have formulated local regulations or administrative documents prohibiting domestic violence. During the 10th Five-year Plan period (2001-2005), some 260 thousand women enjoyed legal assistance from the 3,100 legal assistance institutions in different parts of China. In 2007, nine governmental departments jointly released the document of Suggestions on Preventing and Curbing Domestic Violence. The same year also witnessed China stipulate the Plan of Action for Counter Abducting and Trafficking of Women and Children (2008-2012). All these have helped to foster a mechanism to facilitate and assist women in their pursuit of rights and interests or to afford adequate adjustment.

The government has pushed for the development of Chinese women's human rights with a visible hand, which has in turn brought Chinese women with visible equality and humanistic care. It is quite obvious that Chinese women have achieved historic improvements in enjoying equality with men. These improvements are an important part of international women's progress, as well as of improvement of China's human rights. However, we have to remain sober-minded and realize that, due to restrictions by the level of socio-economic development and influence of cultural tradition, there are still many serious challenges with regard to the conditions of Chinese women's subsistence, development and safeguarding of their rights and interests. For example, there are conspicuous incidents that women's labor rights are harmed; there still exists gender discrimination against women in employment; women's educational level is comparatively low, esp. in rural areas; violations of women, including violence and illegal/criminal actions against women's personal rights still constitute a problem despite continued efforts to curb them. It takes quite a long process for de jure equality to be transformed into de facto equality. There is a lot more for us to do. I personally believe that, the cultural and social environment in which women live can be better improved, women's equal rights to subsistence and development can be better safeguarded, and Chinese women's human rights will be further enhanced, so long as the whole society executes the national policy of equality between men and women seriously, integrating the conception of gender equality into the mainstream decision-making process of economic development, and continuously improving the legal system, law enforcement system and judicial system to safeguard women's human rights.

During the past 60 years, the international community, governments and civil societies have made vigorous efforts to eliminate discrimination against women and to promote full development of women's human rights, and have acquired significant achievements and valuable experience. Yet, due to the differences between social systems, historical backgrounds, cultural environments and stages of socio-economic development, there still exists imbalance in the development of women's human rights among countries. With all countries facing different levels of challenges and obstacles, there is a long way to go to fully realize women's human rights.

(The author is Director of International Liaison Department, All-China Women's Federation.)

(The speech was delivered at the first session of the Beijing Forum on Human Rights.)