经济学人读译The sky’s the limit

Women in China

中国女性

The sky’s the limit

天空无限宽广

But it’s not exactly heaven

却不尽然是天堂

Nov 26th 2011 | from the print edition

PULLY CHAU SPENT eight years working for the Chinese office of a big international advertising agency and never got a pay rise; there was always some excuse. “It was stupid of me not to ask,” she says. “If I had been a Caucasian man, I would have done better.”She stuck around because she liked the idea of working for an outfit that was well known in China and hoped to learn something. Eventually she got fed up and took a job with another Western agency, draftfcb, where she is now chairman and CEO for Greater China, based in Shanghai. Just turned 50, glamorous, confident and boundlessly energetic, she could pick and choose from any number of jobs. There are lots of opportunities for women in China, she says—but in business life is still easier for men.

Pully Chau在一家大型国际广告公司的中国办事处工作了八年，但从未有过加薪，总是有这样那样的借口阻挡她的加薪之路。“我不会傻到不提出疑问，”她说，“倘若我是个白人男性，

我应该会做得更好。”Pully迟迟不肯跳槽的原因是她喜欢为这样一家中国知名度很高的公司工作，并且希望学到一些东西。但长此以往，她受够了这样的境遇，最终跳槽到另一家西方广告公司DraftFCB。现在，她成为这家公司大中华区的主席和首席执行官，总部设在上海。Pully刚过五十岁，她富有魅力，充满自信，活力四射，对现在的她来说，对任何一种工作都可以随意挑选，手到擒来。她说，在中国，女性拥有很多的机会，但商业之路走得更顺的，依旧还是男性。

Women make up 49% of China’s population and 46% of its labour force, a higher proportion than in many Western countries. In large part that is because Mao Zedong, who famously said that “women hold up half the sky”, saw them as a resource and launched a campaign to get them to work outside the home. China is generally reckoned to be more open to women than other East Asian countries, with T aiwan somewhat behind, South Korea further back and Japan the worst. And its women expect to be taken seriously; as one Chinese female investment banker in Beijing puts it, “we do not come across as deferential”.

中国总人口中49%为女性，其中女性劳动力占总劳动力的46%，这个比例比人很多西方国家都高。这很大程度上要归功于毛泽东，他曾有一句名言：“妇女能顶半边天。”他把女性看做一种资源，并发起了让女性在外工作的运动。渐渐地，相较其他东亚国家和地区，中国成为众人眼中对女性更加开放的国家，台湾紧随其后，韩国次之，而日本更次。中国的女性希望受到认真的对待，正如在北京的一位中国女投资银行家所言：“中国女性不会给人留下低眉顺眼的印象。”

Young Chinese women have been moving away from the countryside in droves and piling into the electronics factories in the booming coastal belt, leading dreary lives but earning more money than their parents ever dreamed of. Others have been pouring into universities, at home and abroad, and graduating in almost the same numbers as men. And once they have negotiated China’s highly competitive education system, they want to get on a career ladder and start climbing. The opportunities are there. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, who runs a consultancy, 20-first, that helps companies improve the balance between the sexes in senior jobs, points out that China already has a higher proportion of women in the top layers of management than many Western countries.

大批的年轻中国女性从乡村涌进欣欣向荣的沿海地带，她们在电子工厂中工作，生活枯燥，但所赚的钱却远超出她们父母的梦之所及。还有一些进入了国内外高等学府深造，毕业生男女比例几乎旗鼓相当。一旦通过了中国教育系统竞争激烈的独木桥，她们便希望能找到工作，向职业阶梯的上层攀爬。机遇就摆在那里。20-first是一家帮助平衡高层岗位性别比例的咨询公司，其所有者阿维娃·维滕贝格-考克斯指出，中国企业高管的女性比例已经超过了很多西方国家。

The supply of female talent is abundant, says Jin Yu, a partner with McKinsey in Beijing and their most senior woman in China, but once you start funnelling it the numbers come down. She also concedes that there is room for improvement in the way that Chinese companies nurture potential female leaders. The same goes for the Chinese body politic: only 13 of