Beijing's Women Don't Like Beijing's Living Environment, Dissatisfied with Income

Margaux Schreurs | May 9, 2015 5:00 pm | 2 comments | 3843 reads

According to a survey, women in Beijing have the longest commutes, and are least satisfied with their living environment.

The survey was conducted by the magazine Women of China, the Huahua Women’s Lives Survey Center, and the Huahua Women’s Consumption Indicator Center and indicates that, as of September 2014, women living in the city had an average income of RMB 7,267.2, with a much greater total family average income of RMB 22,526.7. Women thus on average only earned 32.3 percent of the total family income.

Only 21.4 percent of women were satisfied with their family’s average income, compared to 22.2 percent of all people surveyed were satisfied. Also, those surveyed had an average desired income of RMB 11,554, about 1.6 times more their actual income.

The average time that women spend at work each day is 8.3 hours, executives or managers putting in the most time: an average of 9.26 hours. Those working the least were usually institution staff and workers (such as those working at a danwei), with an average of 7.8 hours a day.

In terms of daily commute, Beijing’s women have the longest at 114.2 minutes. The survey also asked women to rate their living environment (not defined), which Beijing women scored 49.6 points (out of 100), lower than Guangzhou women who ranked their living environment at 70.9 points.

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Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
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Re: Beijing's Women Don't Like Beijing's Living Environment,...
Posted May 15, 2015 11:15pm by webdude

When citing statistics, complete citation would be helpful; partial info is somewhere between misleading and useless. Are the salaries quoted per month or per year? If per year, the salaries are quite a bit below the national average. If per month, the magazine must have restricted its survey to the sort of women who read "W" in the U.S. and similar mags in other countries - the rich and privileged.

I'll not be shedding any tears for those women (or men) any time soon. I know many college-educated women with white collar jobs who make about 4000 RMB per month. Complete stats? For women in the publishing industry, that's after-tax, with vacation, health and retirement benefits, but no food nor housing benefit. For teachers, that's after-tax, and often includes free or low-cost housing and food in addition to usual benefits. For publishing and education I don't know of any salary disparity based on sex within similar positions and experience, but men are have a disproportionate share of higher-salaried administrative and managerial positions.

Regarding the daily commute of nearly 2 hours, I'm not surprised. Even if the salaries cited are monthly, plugging the numbers into a U.S.-website residential calculator like zillow.com* indicates the "average" family can only afford a 1.5M RMB apartment. Where, inside the 4th Ring, can you find a decent place (not tiny or decrepit) for that price big enough for a family?** Again, I don't believe the numbers represent the true "average" family in Beijing, but you can see even "average" privileged families can't afford Beijing's high housing prices.

* If you know of a good housing price calculator website applicable to Beijing, please let me know.

** Again, the article lacks essential facts. How many adults are in the "average family"? Parents, child and grandparents? They should have at least three rooms. Parents and one child? If so, then dad makes about 2x mom's salary. If that's true, so much for Mao's "women hold up half the sky."

Re: Beijing's Women Don't Like Beijing's Living Environment,...
Posted May 10, 2015 12:05pm by joshuats

It's a sad commentary on the State of our Beijing society and how women in power are often given ridiculous demands by the by the "good o'le boys" club already intrenched in the system.