Women Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation in China

Women’s Political Participation

There is a rich body of literature on women’s political participation in China based on studies of female cadres in government departments that encompasses the following aspects:

• 1. The status quo of women’s political participation, and especially women’s underrepresentation in the political arena, which is indicated by the fact that only a small number of women have leadership positions in the government and most female leaders assume associate positions (Li, 2005; “Project Group,” 2011).
• 2. The socio-cultural constraints on women’s political participation include traditional gender norms and the characteristic division of household labor (Hsiung, 2001; Pei & Liu, 2010; Zhang, 2014); Politically engaged women face greater pressures and more demanding responsibilities than their male counterparts (Guo, 2016).
• 3. The institutional arrangements governing women’s political participation include the application of the gender quota policy (Chen & Liu, 2008; Song, 2016; Wang, 2013).
• 4. Politically engaged women typically have a better education and relatively higher economic status than other women (Li & Zhang, 2016).

Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation

For quite a long period of time before 1978, China put its main efforts into political movements. Since 1978, when China initiated its reform and open-up policy, China’s focus shifted from the political arena to that of economic development. Businesses became a dominant sector. In early 2000, the Chinese government recognized entrepreneurs as an important social force (Chen, Lu, & He, 2008), and today entrepreneurs continue to be a growing social force in China. The literature on entrepreneurial political participation focuses on the positive relationships between entrepreneurs’ political participation and their business performance. Entrepreneurs’ political participation could serve to strengthen their own political influence, build up their social networks with local governments, protect their own business interests, and facilitate the future development of their businesses by obtaining more and longer-term loans from state banks, being entitled to more favorable tax policies and having easier access to certain competitive or monopoly industries (Hu, 2006; Lang, 2015; Song, Feng, & Tan, 2014).

An Analytical Framework for Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation

Female entrepreneurs’ political participation has had significant impacts not only on women as an entire group, but also on entrepreneurs as the new-rich (Guo & Dong, 2006). Following a review of the literature of both women’s political participation and entrepreneurs’ political participation, this study undertakes to answer the following three questions to advance our understanding of Chinese female entrepreneurs’ political participation: (1) How do female entrepreneurs understand their political participation? (2) What are the determinants of female entrepreneurs’ political participation? (3) How do female entrepreneurs practice political participation?

Term Definitions

Before analyzing female entrepreneurs’ political participation, we will define the two key terms discussed in this paper: female entrepreneurs and political participation. In this research, female entrepreneurs include not only female partners and owners of businesses, but also female business managers. Political participation in general encompasses the various activities citizens undertake to influence government behaviors. In this research, given that female entrepreneurs have full-time jobs, their political participation is only represented in the following five forms, namely, as representatives of the People’s Congress, as members of the CPPCC, as representatives of a women’s congress, as representatives of the CPC, or as directors or committee members of a trade and commerce union.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Understanding of Political Participation

Before we discuss the determinants of women’s entrepreneurial political participation, we first examine the female entrepreneurs’ understanding of political participation by verifying how important it is to these women to be politically involved (see Tables 2 and 3), how they perceive their own political status and power (Table 4), tokenism (Table 5), political abilities (Table 6), the political channels through which they can be politically involved (Table 7), and finally by identifying their own motivations for being politically involved (Table 8).

Female entrepreneurs were in unanimous agreement on the importance of political participation: 73.48% considered political participation very important, 19.70% considered it important; and none of the respondents thought that political participation was unimportant (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Understanding of the Importance of Political Participation(N = 132)

When asked how much they cared about being able to participate in the political arena, however, none of the respondents cared very much about being able to be politically involved; about half of them (46.97%) did not care at all; the other 33.33% said that they just complied with the organization’s arrangement, which served as a synonym for not caring (see Table 3). Female entrepreneurs perceived political participation as being important, however, as individuals they did not care much about being able to participate in the political arena.

Table 3.

The Extent to Which Female Entrepreneurs’ Care about Political Participation(N = 132)

Most female entrepreneurs evaluated their political status and power as neither high nor low. As shown in Table 4, most respondents (65.91%) perceived female entrepreneurs’ political status and power as just neither high nor low. Of the respondents, 13.64% believed that female entrepreneurs had low political status, while exactly the same percentage believed that they had high political status and power.

Table 4.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Their Own Political Status and Power(N = 132)

Responses to the question, “do you feel any tokenism in women’s political participation” further clarified female entrepreneurs’ perceptions of their own political status and power: 72.73% of respondents perceived some tokenism in female entrepreneurs’ political participation (see Table 5).

Table 5.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Tokenism in Political Participation(N = 132)

Female entrepreneurs obviously had strong confidence in their own ability to participate in political processes, and when asked to compare their own abilities to those of men, a large percentage (86.36%) of female entrepreneurs believed their abilities equaled those of men, and 4.55% even believed their abilities were greater than those of men (see Table 6).

Table 6.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Their Own Political Participation Abilities Compared to Those of Men(N = 132)

This study also examined female entrepreneurs’ perceptions of political participation channels. No respondents thought that there were many such channels, and most of them believed there were comparatively few (46.97%) or very few channels (19.70%) by means of which female entrepreneurs could become politically involved (see Table 7).

Table 7.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Perceptions of Their Own Political Participation Channels(N = 132)

The final survey question on female entrepreneurs’ understandings of their political participation pertained to their motivations (see Table 8). The respondents were asked to select from multiple possible answers to explain their motivations. Only 26.51% of the respondents said that their political participation was for the purpose of fulfilling their rights and obligations as citizens. Their motivations indicated a strong gender perspective, and significant self-interest that included upgrading women’s social consciousness and status (59.85%), fulfilling one’s own social values and influence (66.67%), fulfilling one’s own values (59.85%), and benefitting one’s own career and business development (53.03%).

Table 8.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Motivations for Political Participation (Choose All that Apply)(N = 132)

Determinants of Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation

In this section, we classify the determinants of female entrepreneurs’ political participation into three categories: (1) individual factors, (2) organizational factors, and (3) family and public factors. For the individual factors, we examined the impacts of female entrepreneurs’ personal traits—including their educational attainments and professional skills (see Table 9) and economic status (Table 10)—on their political participation. With regard to organizational factors, we identified the roles played by organizations in facilitating female entrepreneurs’ political participation (Table 11) and mobilizers of female entrepreneurs’ political participation (Table 12). Under family and public factors, we examined families’ attitudes toward female entrepreneurs’ political participation (Table 13), how major housework responsibilities were undertaken in female entrepreneurs’ households (Table 14), and public attitudes toward female entrepreneurs’ political participation (Table 15). Tables 9-11 summarized participants’ responses to the questions regarding how they perceived their educational attainments and professional skills, economic status, and organizational recommendation had impacted their political participation.

Female entrepreneurs’ educational attainments and professional skills had significantly positive impacts on their political participation. Most female entrepreneurs believed that their educational attainments and professional skills were very important (53.03%) or important (33.33%) to their political participation (see Table 9). An equally important determinant of female entrepreneurs’ political participation was their economic status (19.70% very important and 66.67% important) (see Table 10).

Table 9.

Impacts of Female Entrepreneurs’ Educational Attainments and Professional Skills on Their Political Participation(N = 132)

Table 10.

Impacts of Female Entrepreneurs’ Economic Status on Their Political Participation(N = 132)

Most respondents believed that an organization’s recommendation was very important (39.39%) or important (46.97%) to their political participation. No one thought that an organization’s recommendation was not at all important (see Table 11). In the Chinese context, organization does not just describe a system comprised of a group of people or a particular unit. Especially, in political discourse, organization is a general term that describes any officially established unit or collective of such units with specific legal status, authority, and resources. The term organization as used in this paper is consistent with the general meaning of the term in the Chinese context. The organization plays a very important role in facilitating individuals’ political participation in China, and therefore an organization’s recommendation is extremely important. Many important life opportunities, such as joining the Communist Party of China, the army, and being the member of a political or economic organization, depends on receiving a recommendation from an organization.

Table 11.

Impacts of an Organization’s Recommendation on Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation(N = 132)

Responses to the question about the mobilizers of female entrepreneurs’ political participation also confirmed the importance of the organization (see Table 12). For 40.15% of the respondents, their political participation was the result of an organization’s mobilization and recommendation. Only 19.70% of the respondents were politically involved by their own choice, and no respondents were mobilized by family members.

Table 12.

Mobilizers of Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation(N = 132)

Having said that no female entrepreneurs had been mobilized to participate in politics by their family members, it was interesting to note that no one said their family members were opposed to their political participation (see Table 13). Instead, 40.15% of respondents reported that their family members supported their political participation, and another 40.15% held neutral attitudes.

Table 13.

Attitudes of Female Entrepreneurs’ Families to Their Political Participation(N = 132)

In the responses to our survey, only very few (6.82%) female entrepreneurs reported that they had major housework responsibilities in their households (see Table 14). In the households of 53.03% of female entrepreneurs, wives and husbands shared the housework. About one third of the female entrepreneurs received help with the housework either from housekeepers (6.82%) or their parents/relatives (26.51%).

Table 14.

Major Responsibilities for Housework in Female Entrepreneurs’ Households(N = 132)

Public attitudes toward female entrepreneurs’ political participation were quite complicated (see Table 15). Only 13.64% of female entrepreneurs believed they had both the trust and support of the public, and the same percentage of female entrepreneurs believed they received neither trust nor support. When we classified the responses to the questions on public attitudes into two groups—trust and support—66.67% of female entrepreneurs believed that they had public support (13.64% trust and support, and 53.03% no trust yet support), and 73.49% believed they did not have the public trust (53.03% no trust yet support, 13.64% neither trust nor support, 6.82% no trust). The interesting findings here were that most female entrepreneurs perceived that they received more public support than public trust. There may be various reasons for this paradox: the public may have believed that female entrepreneurs’ political participation was a right and necessary cause, but they did not necessarily believe that female entrepreneurs had the power to make much difference.

Table 15.

Public Attitudes toward Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation(N = 132)

Political Participation Behaviors

The two major political participation behaviors and duties of female entrepreneurs are voting and making policy recommendations. Here we examined how female entrepreneurs voted in their political organizations (see Table 16), and which policy topics they proposed (see Table 17). Most respondents took voting very seriously, and 85.6% of respondents attended votes. However, 8.82% of women entrepreneurs never voted, which indicates that they actually did not care to fulfill their obligation and right to vote.

Table 16.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Voting Behaviors in the Political Organization(N = 132)

Table 17.

The Topics of Female Entrepreneurs’ Proposals (Choose All that Apply)(N = 132)

Female entrepreneurs’ biggest concerns pertained to their own industry, and 66.67% of female entrepreneurs had once proposed policies on industrial issues. One third of the female entrepreneurs (33.33%)—who included mothers—were also concerned about children and women’s issues. Political issues were the least concerning issue overall, and accounted for only 6.82% of respondents policy proposals.

Understanding Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation Perceptions and Determinants: Paradoxes and Conflicts

Several pairs of paradoxes and conflicts regarding female entrepreneurs’ perceptions and the determinants of their political participation—more specifically, perceptions versus motivations, and family mobilization versus family attitudes—were identified.

Perceptions versus motivations. There are huge gaps between what female entrepreneurs understood and perceived, and what motivated their political participation. They understood the importance of political participation, yet they did not care much about their own political participation. They were confident in their own abilities to participate in the political arena, which they believed to be equal to or even stronger than their male counterparts, yet they were not eager to become politically involved. The reasons behind these paradoxes and conflicts might be the barriers created by traditional gender norms, the lack of opportunities to participate in political processes, and complicated public attitudes toward women’s political participation.

Family mobilizations versus family attitudes. Participants’ responses to questions related to families’ attitudes toward politically engaged female entrepreneurs revealed ambivalent attitudes: no female entrepreneurs had been mobilized by their family members to become politically engaged, yet no female entrepreneurs said their families did not support them when they did so. It seems that female entrepreneurs’ families had a neither encouraging nor discouraging attitude toward their political participation.

Female Entrepreneurs’ Political Participation Behaviors: By Whom and for Whom

By whom female entrepreneurs were mobilized and recommended. Unlike most western countries, where women’s political participation is the outcome of lengthy women’s rights movements and women’s own preferences, most Chinese women’s political participation is more likely to be the result of an organizational arrangement rather than an expression of their own wills. Many organizations in China, including trade unions and entrepreneurial associations, have close ties with the governments at the different levels. By joining these organizations, women have access to both the information and opportunities necessary to political engagement. Therefore, it is apparent that organizations play fundamental roles in facilitating and arranging for female entrepreneurs’ political participation.

For whom female entrepreneurs become politically engaged. It is not surprising that most female entrepreneurs proposed policies relevant to their own industries and women and children’s issues, given that female entrepreneurs tended to think that their political participation was about upgrading women’s social consciousness and status, and fulfilling their own social values, rather than fulfilling their rights and obligations as citizens. This finding indicates that their real concerns for becoming politically engaged involved improving their own business performance and advancing their own interests.

In conclusion, female entrepreneurs’ political participation in China is still in the early stage, and it is unavoidable that they will encounter tokenism and face public distrust. The status of female entrepreneurs’ political participation will be improved in the future, if they are able to develop greater awareness of their basic political rights, and governments at different levels provide them with more opportunities to actively participate in political arena.