Why Are Chinese Women Underrepresented in Government: A Comparative Analysis of Women's Political Representation in China and Vietnam

Women's political representation serves as an indicator for measuring governments' commitment to achieving gender equality. This paper aims to investigate the reasons behind China's weak female political representation compared to Vietnam, the world's second-largest economy1, through comparative analysis. As a socialist country with a Confucian influence2, the Vietnamese Communist government improved women's political representation during the revolution by establishing effective national institutions for guaranteeing women's rights, implementing gender quotas, and decentralizing power. In contrast, the Chinese government did not implement a similarly effective program, which led to differences in how women have been incorporated into the political system of the two countries during the revolutionary period. Moreover, public opinion in both countries seems to be influenced to varying degrees by public opinions on traditional women's roles, making the impact of public opinion on women's political representation a widely debated topic.