BEIJING — A row of nine men in identical-looking dark suits — the all-male line-up of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the inner circle of power here — is a familiar image in China.
The lack of women at the top is perhaps no surprise. China is ‘‘a male-dominated society,’’ as Cai Xia, a professor at the party-building center in the Central Party School, recently told the People’s Daily (here’s the report in Chinese).
But how are women doing lower down in ‘‘the organization,’’ as the Communist Party is known here? (In Chinese that’s zuzhi, pronounced dzoo zher.) Are women faring better lower down the ranks?
Not really, according to new figures released by the two most official news sources here, the party-run People’s Daily and Xinhua, the state-run news agency.
In fact, the numbers show something interesting: Fewer than one in four of China’s nearly 83 million party members are female, or just 23.3 percent. The party is largely a boys-only affair.
As the party gears up for its important 18th Congress later this year — when 2,270 delegates from around the country will gather in Beijing to formally choose a new leader, or general secretary (that person is widely expected to be the current, male, vice president, Xi Jinping) — provincial party committees have also been appointing new leaders in China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
These people are crucially important. They will form the core of the next generation of party leaders who will work under the new general secretary, implementing orders from above and, sometimes, reaching their own local solutions to local issues.
But at the provincial level, too, women are poorly represented. Just one party secretary is a woman — Sun Chunlan, the party secretary of Fujian Province. There is one female provincial governor in China — Li Bin, governor of Anhui Province.
