男女平等仍是一个亟待解决的问题

Women's issues are related to many other important issues all over the world, such as health care, violence and social development.

Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Global women's issues, has been invited to join an International Forum on Women and Sustainable Development organized by the All-China Women's Federation. She says China is now taking measures to promote women's participation in sustainable development and their achievements and she is glad to see a more prosperous China with more participation by women.

"We are very pleased that our two governments agreed to a high level US-China women's exchange and dialogue. And we call it women-led. Economics, social and environmental that are critical pillars for sustainable development. We can not make progress on any of these pillars without women's equality and women's participation."

Even though some measures have been implemented in an effort to solve women's issues, gender equality is still a serious problem.

Zhang Li, who is the chief-editor of the Worker's Daily, says that even now, many parents still have a preference for boys.

"From legal aspect, gender equality still is a constitutional right here. All the laws guarantee women get the opportunity to politics and to work. But in reality it is a little bit different. For example, female graduates may find it is more and more difficult to get a job."

Zhang also says that because women must deal with issues like being pregnant, some companies may think it will raise their costs if they hire more women. And because of the heavier economic pressure, most of the women wish they could have a baby boy rather than baby girl, because raising a girl is also much more expensive than boys.

Melanne Verveer says that although it's urgent, gender equality needs time to be solved.

"I think it is a very serious issue, one that we need to work on together to make sure that it doesn't grow as a problem but the one in which it can really be tackled. It need to be tackled in a high level but it also needs to be tackled at a very low level. No mother should feel like a failure because she has given birth to a daughter."

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.