Beijing News (Reporter Dai Xuan) Dong Yuelin, a representative of the National People's Congress and dean of the School of Language, Culture and International Education of Liuzhou Institute of Technology, is concerned that women have high career interruption rates due to their main caregiving responsibilities in traditional families, difficulty in returning to work after childcare, long promotion cycles, and many concerns about childbirth. During the National Two Sessions this year, she suggested that we should make up for the shortcomings in three aspects: employment support, maternity subsidies, education and medical care, and improve the female maternity security system in the western region.
Dong Yuelin, deputy to the National People’s Congress and dean of the School of Language, Culture and International Education of Liuzhou Institute of Technology. Photo provided by interviewee
Dong Yuelin said that one of the current problems that reduces women’s willingness to have children is that their career development is restricted after childbirth. A full-chain female employment support system should be built to eliminate concerns about employment after childbirth.
Affected by the traditional division of family roles, women in the western region often bear the main care responsibilities. Due to family matters such as childbirth, childcare, and supporting the elderly, their career interruption rate is higher than that of men, and their promotion cycles are generally longer than that of men. When women raising children, especially those raising children in rural areas and counties, return to the workplace, on the one hand, they are faced with the rapid updating of industry skills and the easy "skills disconnect" after leaving the job. On the other hand, there are relatively few flexible employment positions in counties and rural areas, insufficient childcare services, the problem of "time conflict" is prominent, and women have many concerns about childbirth.
She suggested that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the All-China Women's Federation support the western region in setting up women's employment service centers at the city and county levels, relying on the existing brands of the women's federations in each city to integrate skills training, career planning, job matching and other functions, focusing on e-commerce, housekeeping, handicrafts and other special training. It also promotes flexible employment models, encourages enterprises, especially labor-intensive enterprises and service industry enterprises such as housekeeping services and e-commerce customer service, to set up "mother posts" and include them in the employer directory, implement flexible working hours, work from home and other flexible mechanisms, provide certain social security subsidies to enterprises that absorb the employment of women raising children, and provide certain venue rent subsidies to enterprises that set up "mother workshops" within the county. Special job fairs for female college students can also be held every year to develop public welfare positions for women with employment difficulties and provide dual support of job subsidies and social security subsidies.
In terms of maternity security policies, although various regions in the western region have introduced policies such as extending maternity leave and issuing childcare subsidies, the level of security is still difficult to cover the actual cost of childbirth and childcare. Starting from January 1, 2025, the childcare subsidy system will be implemented simultaneously in the western region and the whole country, but the annual subsidy of 3,600 yuan per child is still a drop in the bucket. A survey by Guangxi Normal University shows that local families spend an average of more than 50,000 yuan per year from pregnancy to 3 years old, and more than 80% of the respondents listed "high financial burden" as the primary obstacle to childbirth.
In addition, there are still differences between urban and rural areas in the distribution of educational and medical resources in the western region. And the "China Childbirth Cost Report 2024" shows that the average cost of raising a child aged 0-17 in southwest China is about 480,000 yuan, of which education and medical expenses account for more than 40%, which puts heavy pressure on ordinary families.
She suggested that the maternity subsidy payment standard should be adjusted every two years based on the growth of residents' per capita disposable income, and an additional subsidy amount should be increased for families with three children on the existing basis; the childcare subsidy should be moderately increased and the coverage should be expanded to all families that meet the policy. At the same time, we have simplified the application process, relied on local government affairs platforms to realize "one-stop processing" of maternity subsidies and childcare subsidies, promoted "no need to apply and enjoy" service, automatically identified eligible families through data sharing and accurately distributed subsidies.
In terms of allocation of educational and medical resources, investment in county and rural schools should be increased, and efforts should be made to achieve full coverage of standardized campuses in remote areas within three years; living subsidies and academic assistance from compulsory education to high school should be provided to students from poor families. Improve the level of medical security, include routine physical examinations, vaccinations and other items for children aged 0-6 years into the scope of full reimbursement, and increase the reimbursement ratio of children's serious illness insurance; build additional children's specialist clinics in county hospitals and introduce high-level pediatric medical staff; equip township health centers with professional pediatricians (at least 1 per township), and solve the problem of "distance and difficulty in seeking medical treatment" for rural children through the "county and township linkage" mechanism.
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2026 Two Sessions·Voices of Representatives
