Childcare Policy Reform and Women’s Labour Force Participation in China

Social policy, specifically childcare policy, was historically a critical tool in promoting women’s labour market participation during the ‘socialist’ regime in China. Prior to economic reforms, the central government clearly specified the welfare function of childcare in relieving women’s household burden, thereby enabling women to more equally participate in production work under the socialist planned economy. However, in the last 30 years, as China has restructured the centrally planned socialist economy of the 1949–79 period towards a more export-oriented industrial economy (Arrighi 2007: 351–78), the Chinese government has been more interested in national growth than relieving women from household responsibilities and promoting welfare support for working women with children. As the economy has gradually opened up to market competition, social reproduction expenditures, especially those in state-owned enterprises, have been considered as costs to market efficiency and economic growth by the government. Therefore, public funding for childcare has been restrained and even cut. And cost-cutting in the domain of social reproduction greatly affects women’s employment opportunities, as women are still the primary caregivers in Chinese society.