

Mao once decreed women hold up half the sky but their recent political presence has proved minimal. Until now, perhaps
Liu Yandong with Hu Jintao, China's president
Liu Yandong with Hu Jintao, China's president, centre, and Donald Tsang, Hong Kong's outgoing chief executive. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Besuited and fiercely disciplined, with a powerful family background and experience in the Communist Youth League, Liu Yandong appears much like other cadres jockeying for position in China's pending leadership transition, bar one very obvious difference: her gender.

She is the only female member of the 25-member politburo and would be the first woman to reach its standing committee, the country's top political body. Though she is regarded as a long shot, "the door is not closed", said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution.

Slogans such as "women hold up half the sky" once embodied the Communist party's pledge to raise the status of women. Economic reforms further boosted them. China ranks a respectable 35th on the UN's gender empowerment index.

Yet in Chinese politics women remain a glaring absence. The annual session of the National People's Congress shows banks of dark-suited men; only a fifth of the largely rubber-stamp legislature is female, and barely one-sixteenth of the party's central committee. There is one female provincial party secretary and one governor. At the grassroots 2%-3% of village party chiefs and 22% of committee members are female.

Feminists say better representation is crucial to addressing enduring, or even increasing, inequality. Many fear women face a deterioration in their status, citing changes to marital property rights that have disadvantaged women, incomes shrinking in comparison to men's and increasing gender stereotyping.

"The mainstream value system portrays women as weak. From kindergarten on, girls are told to be obedient," said Xie Lihua, the founder of the Rural Women NGO.

She added: "If women's political status can't be improved, all other talk about women's rights is just empty words."

Women played an important role in shaping modern China; there were high-profile leaders and thinkers, and female soldiers. Yet the two most prominent female leaders gained power through marriage. Song Qingling was the widow of revered revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing was blamed for the Cultural Revolution's excesses, though she later insisted she was "Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whomever he wanted me to bite."

Many believe the backlash against her damaged women in general.

"The number of women in politics declined from the late 1970s onwards," said Tamara Jacka of the Australian National University, who is studying the effect of female leadership on gender equality in Chinese villages.

Under Deng Xiaoping the regime sought legitimacy by distancing itself from its predecessors.

"One of the most powerful leaders was Jiang Qing and so part of the discrediting of the Cultural Revolution involved the discrediting of the notion that women should be involved and take leadership positions in the public sphere," Jacka said.

As in other countries, women lack confidence to step forward, are disadvantaged in networking, bear more of the household chores and face higher standards and stereotyping, such as the assumption they will interrupt their career to have children.

But other obstacles are particular to China. Rural women usually marry into their husband's villages, so men have better-established connections. The government's limited tolerance for civil society means that grassroots campaigners don't enter politics from outside. The opaque promotion system encourages institutional discrimination; there is anecdotal evidence that female officials do better in open selection processes. Women also retire earlier than men, just when they might take on more significant roles.

Optimists hope that today's young, high-achieving female students will be a powerful force for progress. At least a few are hungry for change; small protests this year included the occupation of men's toilets in Guangzhou, by women demanding better female facilities.

At government level the All-China Women's Federation has launched a UN-funded $2.5m programme to promote political participation. Beijing has made a growing number of officials undergo training on gender issues and there are some quotas, though usually low; in cities, at least one of the top four leaders should be female.

But as Feng Yuan, the founder of an anti-domestic violence network, warned: "'At least one woman' can always become 'one woman'."

Xie noted that the issue was not a government priority, but added: "Women have to change themselves too. They have to be brave and courageous enough to compete."

A civil group working with officials in a Shaanxi county increased the proportion of female village heads from 0.6% to 4.5% over six years with imaginative tactics, including commissioning a local opera on women and power.

But Gao Xiaoxian, the scheme's pioneer, noted afterwards: "Some male cadres formed alliances to prevent women from succeeding … some town and township cadres demanded total perfection of the women officials, exaggerating every tiny defect."

Female village committee members are usually relegated to minor roles and women are more likely to head poorer settlements with no collective wealth. In those places, said Jacka: "Being a village leader is just hell. You don't have the resources to do anything for villagers and you don't have the power to change anything much; you are under enormous pressure from villagers but also from above."

Addressing participation alongside broader issues may help. In one village in Henan residents drew up new rules after undergoing gender awareness training. As well as introducing quotas, they demanded the division of housework, an equal right for women to inherit their parents' land rights, and the option for children to take their mother's name instead of their father's.

Appointing 67-year-old Liu to the standing committee could send a powerful signal from the very top. Even Wu Yi, the formidable negotiator dubbed China's "Iron Lady", never made it that far. But Cheng Li warned: "Competition is so intense they don't even bother to look at the symbolism."

Russell Leigh Moses, dean of the Beijing Centre for Chinese Studies, added: "She is extremely qualified, amazingly competent and remarkably proficient at both politics and the subjects put in front of her. Unfortunately, it won't come down to just talent."

He also noted that her policy pronouncements have been markedly conservative recently. They do not suggest she will push for reforms, still less feminist ones – and other countries have found that a handful of senior women may not be enough to shift political culture.

"It is a historical problem. The dominance of politics by men can't be changed by one or two female officials in a short period of time," said Feng.

• Additional research by Kathy Gao

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