A Quota for Men: Bureaucratic Recruitment and Gender Inequality in China

• In Event: Gender, Ethnicity and Identity Politics in Post-Communist Countries

Abstract

We all know there are very few women in Chinese leadership positions, but the literature is inadequate in explaining either the cause or the consequence of this lack of diversity. In this paper, I look at one cause—bureaucratic gender quota—and its consequences on bureaucratic recruitment and the pipeline into political office. Exploiting the data from the National Civil Service Examination (2012-2022) in China, this research suggests that a substantial proportion of entry-level posts show specific gender preference, and most of them are male-preferred. Moreover, indicating pro-male preference in job postings comes at costs by dramatically shrinking the size of candidate pools and lowering the quality of potential candidates. This underappreciated feature of bureaucratic recruitment process challenges long-standing presumptions about meritocracy in China and holds broader implications for research on comparative political recruitment and women representation in highly bureaucratic regimes.

Author

• Xiaoxia Huang, Syracuse University