Women’s Political Status and Gender Ratios at Birth - Empirical Study Based on County Data in 1950-2000[t1] , a paper co-authored by our school’s lecturer You Wuyue and Professor Yao Yang from Peking University, was lately published in the 2020 4th Issue of Social Sciences in China. Based on relevant census data, and by collecting and collating the twice-compiled annals of over 1,700 counties across China after 1949, this paper looks into the effect of enhancement of women’s political rights (measured as a share of women in party members) in the second half of the 20th century on the improvement of their right to subsistence and quality of life (measured by gender ratios at birth and other indicators).
It first finds that women’s political participation in the early years of new China shaped by the country’s revolutionary history, namely the share of female party members in 1950, had a far-reaching impact on the gender ratios at birth in the following five decades: With other relevant influencing factors controlled, the share of female party members would significantly increase the share of women in the newly-born population. Moreover, based on relevant surveys of social attitudes, the authors find that women’s political status is a crucial channel of influence through which people’s attitudes towards childbearing and gender evolve.
To further find out the specific means of formation of such a mechanism, the paper, by matching county annals with individual sample data at a rate of 0.95% of the 2000 census, finds that the enhancement of women’s political rights experienced by women before marriage and childbearing (age 16-20, which is a critical period for the formation of their values) would significantly raise the ratio of women among their live births and existing children. The authors also analyzed gender selection during the family planning period, and find that mothers who experienced the enhancement of women’s political status at the age of 16-20 would substantially increase the probability of giving birth to girls, with such effect esp. obvious on the gender of the second child when the first was a girl. In addition, the paper also finds that the enhancement of women’s political status would affect women’s decisions about the age of marriage and career choices, among others.
To solve the issue of potential endogeneity, the paper selects the exogenous shock of the Anti-Japanese War before the founding of new China, and uses the “anti-Japanese base area established by the main force of the Eighth Route Army” as the instrumental variable for the share of female party members in 1950. Then based on the changing trend of party member structures nationwide after 1950, it builds instrumental variables for the share of female members during different periods, and the above conclusion remains tenable after such variables are used.
This article has a companion piece titled “Women’s Political Participation and Gender Gaps of Education in China: 1950-1990”, also co-authored with Professor Yao Yang and published in World Development in 2018. It studied how the enhancement of women’s political status in the second half of the 20th century advanced gender equality in education in China by changing parents’ gender attitudes and education investment for children.
