As the president of the private ride-hailing enterprise Didi Chuxing, Jean Liu is one of the few women who has risen to the top of China’s private sector. Credit: Sikarin Fon Thanachaiary/World Economic Forum, Creative Commons
Women work outside the home at higher rates in China than they do in the United States. But that doesn’t mean they’re getting the top jobs.
Women’s participation in China’s labor force is dropping dramatically, as The Wire reports in this week’s issue. And even though China still has nearly 60 percent of working-age women in the workforce — higher than the United States and the European Union — that representation has not translated to higher representation in executive positions. By sampling data from Chinese publicly traded firms, we found that Chinese companies were no more likely to have a woman CEO as firms in the U.S.
In this week’s issue, The Wire examines gender disparities in leadership positions at listed Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises, and zooms in on some of the women who have clinched the CEO title.
Few and Far Between
Of the 403 Chinese companies The Wire examined21 of the 424 Chinese companies in the graphic below were listed
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