Women in China have enjoyed more educational opportunities since the implementation of the strategy of invigorating the country through science, technology and education in the 90s, official sources said.
Statistics show that ratios of women receiving various education have been on the rise, with the overall education level of women improved considerably.
According to a recent report released by the Women and Children Working Committee of the State Council, China has eliminated illiteracy for four million people each year over the past several years and over 65 per cent of whom were women.
At the end of 1998, China's adult female illiteracy rate was 22.6 per cent, 1.5 percentage points lower than that of 1995. And those between the age of 15 and 45 had an illiteracy rate less than 8 percent.
The average education that Chinese women received has extended to 6.5 years, and the gap between men and women was lowered to 1.5 years in 1998, compared with 1.7 years in 1995.
Besides, there have been more female students across the country. Those in universities, high schools, middle schools and primary schools were up 2.9, 1.3, 0.9 and 0.3 percent respectively in 1998 over those in 1995.
In 1998, the national schooling rate for female children reached 98.9 per cent, approaching that of developed nations. At the same time, the rate of female dropouts from primary schools was only 0.92 per cent.
Meanwhile, China has been attaching great importance to providing professional, technical and continuing education for women.
By the year of 1999, Hope Project, initiated by the China Youth Development Fund in 1989 to help dropout children to resume schooling, had aided the construction of 7,812 primary schools, with 2.29 million dropouts in the poverty-stricken areas returning to schools and half of whom were female children.
In addition, a special project for female dropouts funded by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) has helped over 900,000 female children go back to school since 1989.
At the same time, Chinese women are assuming active roles in many cutting-edge scientific fields, ranging from microelectronics to satellite launching.
The Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences now have 70 women academicians, accounting for 6 percent of the total academicians. The ratio is believed higher than that in other countries.
(China Daily)
