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How Gender Inequality and the One-Child Policy Gave Rise to the Female Suicide Rate
in China
The statistic is staggering: “in China, one woman kills herself every four
minutes” (Allen, 2006); that is about 500 female suicides per day, or about 182,500
suicides per year according to the World Health Organization (Miller, 2012; WHO,
2009). The suicide rate for females was three times higher than for males in 2009,
making China one of the few countries where women outpace men in suicide rates.
This doesn’t bode well with the already astronomical gender gap that China is
experiencing, where the most current census reveals a gender ratio of 122 boys born
for every 100 girls (McLaughlin, 2013). The certified shortage of women puts pressure
on society in many ways: young men have been unable to find wives, there has been
a sharp rise in gender based violence, and one of the most deleterious consequences
resulting from the gross gender imbalance is the dramatic rise in prostitution and
trafficking.
China, of course, is not the only country experiencing this problem. China,
however, is the most unique. It has been thirty years since the implementation of the
One-Child Policy, a policy that is considered to be the most astounding demographic
experiment in history. It is unprecedented in its scope and extremity, and the social
experiment is considered to be one of the world’s “worst-ever manmade gender gap”
(McLaughlin, 2013). Under the guidance of the government, the infamous Family
Planning Committee enforced a law that “encourages” Chinese families to have only
one child. Those under Chinese rule who did not adhere to guidelines would have
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fines imposed on them, be pressured by society to abort a pregnancy, be obligated to
abandon their child in an orphanage, or, in some extreme cases, be forced to go
through sterilization. Within a patriarchal society, the One-Child policy inherently
shows insolence toward female babies.
It is in this light that I will be analyzing how the issues of gender inequality
coupled with the One-Child Policy has inadvertently given rise to the high female
suicide rate in China. I will first introduce the background and context that has
fostered and sustained the One-Child Policy in China and how the policy has evolved
over the years to the vulnerable state that the policy is in today. In addition, Dugan’s
Nested Conflict Model will also serve as a useful tool in analyzing this conflict from a
social-systems perspective. Dugan’s Nested Conflict Model approaches a conflict or
phenomenon by identifying what level its source lies –at the issue-specific or
relational level, within the structure of the subsystem, or at the structural level of
the system as a whole (Dugan, 1996). More importantly, the model stresses the
extent to which these levels are related, or nested within one another. It is in this
interrelation that the One-Child Policy perfectly illustrates the convergence of health,
economics and law, and how it intersects with issues pertaining to gender and
conflict.
Background- The economic and political justification for population control
China is the largest country in the world in regards to population, and fourth
largest in the world as far as landmass. China was originally a pro-natalist country
under Mao Zedong, which promoted human reproduction and saw nothing wrong with
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a rapidly increasing population (Button, 2011). However, as China’s population rose
dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese leaders began to realize that their
population growth was unsustainable and the move towards a birth limitation policy
was seen as inevitable. Deng Xiaoping succeeded Mao Zedong in 1978, and
immediately made it his priority to spur economic development. In order to do so,
Xiaoping had a “goal of quadrupling social product and reaching a moderate standard
of living with a gross national product of US $1,000 per capital until the turn of the
century” (Button, 2011, p.469). However, Xiaoping saw that the only way that these
projections could be met is if China’s population does not exceed 1.2 billion people in
the year 2000. What Xiaoping anticipated was a Malthusian Population Trap, where
“due to the naturally diminishing returns of the land, food supplies could only be
expected to grow arithmetically. As a result, it would be impossible for food supplies
to match the growth rate of the population, causing per capital income to fall”
(Button, 2011, p. 471).
The extreme concerns regarding population growth could be further
understood by examining China’s modern history. The generation of revolutionaries
that controlled the Chinese government at the time experienced harsh conditions and
famine during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. From 1959 to
1961, 16 to 27 million Chinese had died resulting from food shortages (Button, 2011).
Food shortages, massive unemployment rate, lack of housing and education, and
environmental degradation are all realities that must be faced when a population
expands at an astronomical rate. It is against this backdrop that the One-Child policy
started from the viewpoint of economic planning; it was purely a “numbers game.”
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The Family Planning Commission was established in 1973, and by 1979 it
stringently enforced the One-Child Policy. The unprecedented policy was not met
with unwavering support due to the ingrained traditional belief that more offspring
led to family survival, prosperity and national strength. The decision makers at the
time had three overarching goals for the new policy: (1) to reduce the high fertility
rate under the replacement level; (2) to create and maintain zero population growth,
and (3) to select and maintain an ideal population size according to national
conditions (Jing, 2013). By 1982, the policy was enforced severely through a stick and
carrot approach where the Chinese people were encouraged to abide by the policy by
financial, employment and social incentives such as preferential access to housing,
schools, and health services. If they violated the policy, the people would face harsh
sanctions that ranged from employment setbacks to the denial of basic rights such as
education, healthcare and marriage (Button, 2011).
It has been argued that the One-Child Policy saved an additional 400 million
people from residing on our already crowded earth (Button, 2011), and it is believed
that China’s policy has unquestionably contributed to the power that China holds
today (Liao, 2013). As far as Xiaoping’s goals are concerned, the total fertility rate
(TFR) dropped below the replacement level (2.1) in 1991 and was 1.18 in 2010 (Jing,
2013). The goal of quadrupling per capita income from $250 to $ 1,000 by the year
2000 seemed wildly ambitious at the time. This number was achieved in roughly half
that time. Today, per capita GDP is over $8000 and China has joined the ranks of the
high-middle-income countries (Feng, Cai & Gu, 2012). Since the implementation of
the policy, China has realized an annual economic growth rate of 9 percent, and
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family planning “facilitated a quick improvement of citizen’s educational level, a
sharp drop of the gross dependence ration and poverty rate, and the emergence of
dramatic demographic dividends” (Jing, 2013, p. 393). Currently, China is the second
largest sovereign economic entity. Despite the vast economic changes over the years,
the One-Child Policy is the only major policy that has been kept intact. Whether or
not the policy has had a direct hand in the improvement of the economy remains
disputed. What is for certain, however, is that the problems and destruction that the
policy has placed on the social structure of China is long lasting and irrefutable.
Conflict at the Issues-Specific Level
At the innermost circle of the nested paradigm is the issues-specific conflict.
The issue-specific level is very much like the tip of an iceberg; it is the part of the
conflict that is highly visible to the eye. The high female suicide rate in China is an
indicator of the broader systemic issues that gave rise to the issue-specific conflict.
Many associate China’s high-suicide rate to the country’s spectacular growth within
the past thirty years, where suicide is the number one cause of death among young
women between the ages of 15-34 (Dubois, 2013). The interesting thing about the
suicide problem in China is that it is indiscriminate: suicide is a problem at every
demographic of the Chinese population. It is experienced in both rural and urban
areas (although it is three times higher in rural areas). A vast majority of the women
in China who commit suicide come from poverty, but this problem is also present
within the powerful and wealthy.
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Suicide is somewhat different in the east than it is in the west. For example,
in the United States, depression and other forms of mental illness accompany 90-95%
of all suicides. While in China, only 60% of the suicides are considered mentally ill by
the CDC (Dubois, 2013).
It is believed that between 70-80% of all suicides are direct
results of marital conflict (Allen, 2006). An even deeper understanding of the
prevalence of suicide in China may come from the absence of social taboos against
the act. A contrast from Christian religions of Western cultures that teaches suicide is
a grave sin; most Chinese are very comfortable with the idea of taking their own lives
as a form of escapism. However, a social taboo that does exist in China is the stigma
and shame that comes from losing face by being diagnosed as mentally ill. Within this
culture, it is possible that taking one’s own life is a better alternative than being
subjected to mental health care.
Even with the different views on suicide, there is one aspect of taking one’s
life that is somewhat universal: it conveys a message by the participant that life is
not considered worth living. If the source of the conflict solely resides at the issuesspecific level, then perhaps adequate mental health care and social networks will
suffice. Xu Rong, head of the Suicide Prevention Project at the Beijing Cultural
Development Centre of Rural Women, believes that the ready availability of poisons in
agricultural areas is one of the main culprits of the phenomenon (Allen, 2006). But
how would this explain the occurrence of suicides in non-agricultural areas where
pesticide is not the weapon of choice? Perhaps the availability of the poison may
make the act easier to achieve, but without it there will always be other means. It
still does not address the underlying cause of the conflict. Why are these women
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taking their lives in such an “impulsive” manner? What are their struggles and
grievances within the system that they feel that the only way out would be to take
their own life?
Conflict at the Relational Level
If the issues themselves are not the real source of conflict, then we can begin
examining the next level or type of conflict. “A relational conflict is one which
emerges from problems having to do with the interaction patterns of the parties and
their feelings toward each other” (Dugan, 1996, p. 13). In a collectivist society such
as China, relationship and group orientation is everything to the individual. Even
though China has progressed towards a capitalistic market economy, their
psychological makeup still holds a lot of the traditional values set by Chinese
philosophies of venerable days. Francine Deutsch (2006) examined how traditional
Chinese life might be affected by the One-Child policy and found that although family
structure in China has changed dramatically as a result of the policy, traditional
values such as filial piety still exist.
For centuries before the Mao regime, Chinese families rigorously followed the
teachings of Confucius ideals. The family unit was everything. Children were instilled
the values of filial piety towards their parents at a very early age and a collective
sense of self was encouraged in which family needs and honor came before personal
desires (Deutsch, 2006). Sons were preferred because they provided for their aging
parents and carried on their family name. Daughters were viewed as temporary
members who could not contribute to the lineage and were considered a drainage of
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family resources (Deutsch, 2006). Within the patrilineal system, daughter-in-laws
held the lowest status of the household – she is to obey her father, then her husband,
and then eventually, her son. Women were expected to transfer from their birth
family to their husbands’ family with little deviation in between.
When the Mao Communist government took power, they saw these durable
family units as a threat to the government and saw the need to break down family
allegiance in order to reinforce loyalty to the central government. The One-Child
Policy was considered by some as a tactic used by the government to break down the
family unit over time. This lead to weaker family ties while bolstering one’s
commitment to the government and the market economy. Many have also argued
that the One-Child Policy had inadvertently given rise to gender equality in China by
improving the “intra-household status of female children and enhanced their share of
intra-household resources, thereby contributing to greater equality between the
genders” (Lee, 2012). The argument is that parents were forced to treat the female
child as the same as the male child because she is now their only offspring. However,
this is not the full picture. Just because the female child is entitled to more
resources due to her “only-childness,” does not equate to her holding higher status in
society. Family roles are still highly gendered in China and the One-Child Policy still
has not disrupted the gender preferences deeply rooted in the minds of many Chinese
parents.
Lee’s (2012) empirical results for children from multiple-child households still
show a preference for sons. Besides traditional attitudes, the One-Child Policy has
also placed increasing pressure on women to bear male children, especially if one-
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child is all that is allowed to them. Young married couples face tremendous pressure
to conceive within the first few months of marriage. Failing to do so would mean that
they face overwhelming stigma and shame from their group. Gender norms
exacerbate the stress of infertility for both men and women, but women bear a
heavier psychological and social burden because her status in the family is
determined by her ability to bear children (Pande, Kurz, Wakua, MacQuarrie, & Jain,
2006). Furthermore, a woman is not deemed “fertile” unless she gives birth to a male
child in many countries.
This deeply ingrained “son-preference,” coupled with the One-Child Policy, has
given rise to sex-selective abortion and infanticide. In more rural areas where poor
families cannot afford ultrasounds and abortions, the rate for infanticide is much
higher (Berlatsky, 2013). Sex-selective abortion, in this context, is just another form
of gender-based violence and “is only one small part of widespread social violence
against, and contempt for, women and women’s lives…the point remains that the root
of the problem is clearly not abortion per se, but widespread sexism and sexual
violence” (Berlatsky, 2013). Women are forced into the position of choosing whether
or not to keep their child. Not only is their reproductive health placed at risk, but
the psychological effects of their decision are undoubtedly long-lasting. According to
the State Family Planning Commission (SFPC), more than half the women of
childbearing age have been involuntarily sterilized because of their offenses against
the policy (Bernman, 1999), mainly because the Chinese believe that vasectomy
renders men weak. Even punishment for disobeying the policy is extremely gendered
in China. If the second child happens to be a son, the couple is forced to go through
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counseling rather than to go through forced abortion or adoption. The ingrained
traditional norms have placed immense pressure on the family unit, and the
psychological and physical harm afflicted on women is experienced most vividly at
this level of the conflict.
Conflict at the Level of the Sub-System
The subsystem consists of the government and its policies and the extent to
which the institution has influenced or confined the issue or conflict. The family
structure mentioned earlier in the relational level can also be seen as part of the subsystem. The importance of the sub-system is that it “refers to those conflicts which
have their source in rules, procedures, and traditions of particular social organizations
which are, or are perceived to be, inequitable, antiquated, or ineffectual” (Dugan,
1996, p.16). It is now that I will shift my attention back to the underpinnings of the
One-Child Policy.
One of the biggest critiques of the policy is in its implementation, where
various unintended consequences emerged as a result of poor policy planning (Jing,
2013). The first problem is inconsistent policy enforcement. Those working in the
public sector experienced the most discrimination where public employees often
faced fines and even layoffs if they violated the One-Child policy (Jing, 2013).
Parents who violate the policy were either demoted or deemed ineligible for
promotion, while the “above-quota” children were not allowed to attend public
schools (Liao, 2013). The inconsistencies also led to various loopholes where those
who were wealthier were able to give birth in a foreign country to evade the policy.
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Bribery of government officials is also not uncommon. As of 2005, familyplanning bureaucracy consists of over 500,000 members, along with about 6 million
workers who help with implementation (Hvistendahl, 2010). Fines collected from
unplanned births since 1980 are estimated to be RMB 1.5 to 2 trillion ($190 mil to
$254 mil) and have become a major revenue source of some poor local governments
(Jing, 2013). Because enforcement was flawed from the beginning, the collection and
spending of fines is not fiscally disciplined, and lacks standards, transparency and
monitoring. These stakeholders benefit from the status quo and it is in their best
interest to continue with the implementation of the policy.
Furthermore, the central government assigned stringent birth quotas to local
government but left them to shoulder a portion of the costs. Some local officials,
intent on meeting targets, forced pregnant women to abort and sterilized men against
their will (Hvistendahl, 2010). Others issued offending parents outrageous fines that
they could not afford. This, of course, gave rise to infanticide and sex-selective
abortions as ultrasound machines became widely available. As a result, the gender
imbalance is projected to yield 30 million more men than women by 2030,
heightening the risk of social instability (Feng et al., 2012). However, China is
already experiencing other unintended deleterious consequences such as an increase
in human trafficking and sexual exploitation (Button, 2011).
China has also become the most rapidly ageing nation in the world, and in
Jing’s words (2013, p. 395), “China got old before it got rich.” The one-child policy
played a major role in creating this unprecedented increase in the percent of elderly
citizens; where by 2030, a quarter of its population will be senior citizens (Jing, 2013,
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p. 395). Population number is no longer the major concern in China. Moving forward,
its biggest hurdle to cross will be its rapidly growing population where the social
service system has been devastated by the decrease in family size and an increase in
labor mobility.
While it is possible that China’s policy to limit its population may have
contributed to the world status that it holds today, the policy has proven to be
extremely detrimental to its people where the “benefits” may not be able to offset
the costs. Many factors have contributed to the unprecedented gender imbalance:
the cultural preference for male children, the unfavorable socioeconomic status of
women, and the nearly nonexistent social security system. “China has created a
culture of fear and paranoia around pregnancy” (Button, 2011, p. 478). According to
Dugan (1996, p. 16), “subsystem level conflicts often mirror conflicts of the broader
system, bringing inequities such as racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia to the
places that we work…and even the houses in which we live.” If we were to examine
the issue of the high suicide rate in China at the subsystem level, we could see that as
Chinese women are becoming more educated and are advancing economically, options
besides being confined to the home are becoming more apparent and are increasingly
becoming more available. Why is it then that even with all of the economical
advances and improvements on the quality of life, are these women still killing
themselves? In order to alleviate the gender inequality problem, the endeavor must
begin by tackling the fundamental issues regarding the reasons why the gap exists in
the first place.
Conflict located at the Systems Level
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At the system level, perhaps the high rate of female suicide is due to the
country’s deep patriarchal ties. The system-level structural conflict emerges from
inequities that are built into the social system (Dugan, 1996). These inequities that
are present at this level are a result of human constructs that have been ingrained
into the social structure of the system. One of the propositions made by feminist
analyses’ Taylor and Beinsten (1994) in Conflict and Gender is paramount to the
understanding of conflict resolution; and it is the role of power in conflict. Their
focus is on how gender and power merge, and more specifically, how conflict
naturally arises out of hierarchal social structures. Hierarchy indicates that there is
positional influence where there is always someone in a position more dominating and
powerful than someone else.
The social-cultural arrangement in China reflects this type of structure;
“hierarchy is strongly linked to patriarchy” (Taylor & Beinsten, 1994, p. 13). It is a
system that elevates the power of males and in turn, leads to devaluation of females
and female identified values. This has been proven true where there is a greater
preference for male babies at both a social and economic level. This is also apparent
that the early policy makers of China relied on economics and wealth in order to
justify the creation of the One-Child Policy, and the political system “planned
population numbers in the same way that it planned the production of goods” (Feng
et al., 2012, p. 126). It is the perfect illustration of a poor policymaking process that,
in the absence of public deliberations, transparency, debate and accountability, can
do permanent harm to the members of a society. While there have been laws put
into place to ban sex selective abortions and measures put into place to respond to
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the high female suicide rate, it is at this system level where the most important and
unquestionably the most difficult change must occur in order to secure the true safety
for women in China.
Conclusion and Policy Recommendations
Moving forward, the transition should be towards a system that aims for
equality as its central doctrine. This should be seen as a reconstruction of the
existing system towards an alternative form of structure that will allow for the
increase of power for an individual or group without undermining the power of the
other individual or group. Within this empowerment framework, power is not seen as
limited; empowering another does not necessitate that power will be taken away
from you (Taylor & Miller, 1994). This, of course, is the ideal model for the social
system. China, with its deeply ingrained patriarchal system has a long way to go and
the move towards gender equality is unfortunately not at the top of their list of
priorities. Change at the social structural level will take time—maybe even
generations. If change at the systems level is not feasible at the current moment, or
in the foreseeable future, then we need to move onto the sub-system to implement
change there.
Currently, policy advocates are nudging the Chinese government towards a
two-child policy (Hvistendahl, 2010). Some are advocating for a universal two-child
policy, while most are pushing for a two-child policy with required intervals inbetween births (Hvistendahl, 2010). This change, however, still does not address the
entrenched preference for sons. Yes, abolishing the one-child policy, or even the
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two-child policy, may not be a panacea for the gender gap problem, because the
problem is still that the son-preference is tied to the laws that still favor men, due to
reasons tied to inheritance and social security. Perhaps, then, we can start to try to
reconfigure China’s population policy by examining India’s population policy –a
country very similar to China in that it is experiencing the same population woes.
India led a brutal sterilization campaign between 1975 and 1976, where more
than 8 million sterilizations were performed (Feng et al., 2012). The campaign
ultimately led to the collapse of Indira Gandhi’s government in January 1977 and
resulted in new approaches to birth control. By the mid-1990s, all targets related to
birth control had been removed (Feng et al., 2012) and their policy redirected itself
towards family welfare. Their model today reflects their attempt to not mimic
China’s approach that imposes disciplinary policies towards its people. Rather than
implementing exacting policies that regulate population, India has tried to mitigate
the problem through policies that might help alleviate gender selection such as
banning ultrasounds for sex-selective abortion (Rohde, 2003). This has, however,
given rise to the high incidence of infanticide. India’s “son complex” still poses a
problem for the imbalance in gender ratio.
India’s population concerns have been attributed to the macro processes of
caste, class and religious inequality that survived in India, and have ultimately
contributed to the gender inequality problem in the country today (Desai, 1994).
Again, there seems to be a disconnection between policy and outcome because
“although Indian population policy has routinely adopted the view that improvement
in women’s status is a precondition for fertility decline, a women-centered population
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policy has yet to be articulated” (Desai, 1994, p. 3). The gendered perspective on
population policy according to Desai (1994, p.3-5) must reflect two instrumental
preconditions: (1) Changing the social structure to allow women to make marital and
fertility choices free of social or economic constraints; and (2) encouraging the
improvement of women’s and girls’ health by promoting social conditions that will
enable women to obtain better health and wellbeing for themselves and their
children. It seems that Desai (1994) would contend with the idea that structural
change must redefine the goals of population policy from the perspective of the
individual by focusing on reproductive choice and women’s health.
Even critics of China’s policy have accepted the belief that China’s harsh policy
has played a positive role in population containment. However, a closer examination
of the data may show contrasting results. A report conducted by Feng et al. (2012)
used data from countries that had a birth rate similar to China’s in 1970 to compare
the trajectory of change in these countries with that of China. Their analysis shows
that in other countries without a one-Child policy the birth rate also declined, and it
declined below the level predicted for China. More importantly, their data indicates
that contrary to popular belief, raising fertility will be an even more challenging task
than reducing it.
The removal of the obsolete and ill-founded policy needs to occur now; a
timely change may mean that the first one-child generation can still opt for a second
birth. China should move forward from its old development model that sacrifices
long-term benefits for short-term gains. The new population policy needs to inspire
to improve lives of citizens physically, mentally, and intellectually; and perhaps this
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shift in ideology may allow for both basic rights to flourish and the increase in
capacity to compete in the global arena. There has been an increase in public unrest
in China—couple this with the dominant male population—and you may have on your
hands a volatile situation. The generation of “little emperors” are starting to realize
that population should no longer be seen as a number of aggregated goods, but are
instead comprised of individuals whose reproductive rights should not be controlled
by its government.
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