Women's Education Level Seen a Significant Rise in China

As released from a press conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province March 7, the woman's education level, which has for quite a long time been much lower than the man's, is now showing signs of a dramatic rise in China.

Statistics reveal: women over 15 years old average a schooling of 6.41 years in China, an improvement in education as against that of the men's. Results from the two population censuses indicate that the level of education among women folks receiving college, senior high school and junior high school training has seen an enhancement faster than that of the men's.

With the woman social status raised, their zest for receiving adult education is booming up. At present, among the 28 adult colleges and 151 adult technical schools in Zhejiang Province, women students took up 52% and 63.3 % respectively.

Zhang Xiaolin, chairman of Zhejiang Women's Federation, pointed out that the enhancing of women's accomplishments has helped expanding the women technician team. By the end of last year, among the professional technicians, 43.3% are women, 20% have high level professional titles.

Up to now, there are 73 women academicians in Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering, accounting for 6% of the total.

With the improvement of women's social status, their desire to get more knowledge and to improve their attainments has become a thing of primary choice. Even in China's countryside where rural population accounts for 80% of the whole nation, women can have chances to get educated. From 1995 to 1999, altogether 412, 000 uneducated youngsters and adults have been helped to shake off illiteracy, of which 302,000 are women.

In the past 10 years, more than 20 million women succeeded in throwing off illiteracy, nearly 100 million women farmers underwent a practical training in skilled work, 23 million women learned new know-how in agriculture and special training about new species, more than 15 million women received education in agriculture by correspondence and some 510,000 women got the title of agricultural technician.

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