Career Patterns and Policies of Female Leaders in China

China’s late Chairman Mao Zedong once said “Women hold up half the world”, but in several respects the full emancipation of women still remains a global challenge. This book, based on extensive empirical studies on Chinese female leaders in different fields, develops a “female professional status attainment theory”. It summarizes the conditions for Chinese women to become leaders in various professions as the following: increased human, economic and social capital; gender equality awareness; gender-friendly environment; and improved work-life-balance. The book also proposes supporting policies for the development of high-level female talents female leaders in three different sectors: women in politics, in professional fields, and in enterprise management. With the comprehensive perspectives of female leaders’ development that addresses women’s unique needs in organizations, this book is a good choice for researchers and readers who are interested in China’s top-level talent development, gender equality and women’s professional attainment.

The Author
Xin Tong is the professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Center for Chinese and Foreign Women’s Studies at Peking University, the Chief Expert of the major research projects in the philosophy and social science research of the Ministry of Education on Career Patterns of Female Leaders in China, the Director of the Chinese Workers and Labor Research Center of the Department of Sociology at Peking University. Besides, she is also a member of the Executive Committee of the All-China Women’s Federation, the Vice President of the Marriage and Family Research Association of China, the President of the Beijing Marriage and Family Research Association, the Vice Secretary-General of the China Women’s (Gender) Theory Research Association, the President of the Women’s/Gender Research Committee of the Chinese Sociological Association, and the Vice President of the Society of Labor Sociology of the Chinese Sociological Association. At the same time, she is also the member of the Central Committee of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, the Director of the Women and Children Committee of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, and the member of the Committee of Directors of the China Association for Promoting Democracy at Peking University. In terms of academic journals, she is a member of the special editorial board of the Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies and the Journal of Shandong Women’s University and a member of the Expert Committee of the Medium and Long-term Youth Development Plan (2016-2025). Her representative works include: Introduction to the Gender Studies (Peking University Press), Career Patterns and Policies of Female Leaders in China, etc.; and her co-authored papers include: The Present Situation of Gender Attitudes and the Factors Influencing Them [Social Science in China, 2014(2)], A Model of Conjugal Cooperationin Housework for Urban Dual-career Couples [Social Science in China, 2015(6)], etc.


The Translator
Tianwen Zhu is an Associate Professor of English, and a supervisor of MTI (Masters of Translation and Interpreting) students at the School of Foreign Languages, Fuzhou University (Fuzhou 350108). She has been a visiting researcher at the University of East Anglia, the U.K. from 2010 to 2011. Her academic interest is media translation, and she has published more than a dozen articles in academic journals on translation, including A Book Review on Boase-Beier’s “A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies” (2013), A Narrative Comparison of Parallel Texts of Translated News Features (2013), and A Comparison of Discourse Rhetoric of Chinese and English Economic Parallel Texts and Their Translation (2019). She has co-translated books, including A Piano Course for Dummies (2002), A Panorama of Fujian: C-E Translations for Practical Reference (2014), Success with BEC Vantage (2018). She is now one of the standing directors of Fujian Translators’ Association.