Despite remarkable progress in improving the status of women in social and economic terms, China lags the rest of Asia in empowering women politically, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) study has found. Women's participation in the labour force in China is now 70 per cent, far higher than the 35 per cent in South Asia and the global average of 53 per cent. Life expectancy has risen to 75 years, while female literacy rates are more than double India's. “China stands out in its achievements and efforts to ensure gender equality, and China is ahead of most East Asian countries,” says Abhimanyu Singh, chair of the U.N. Theme Group on Gender in China, and UNESCO's representative in Beijing.

"Equal rights, equal opportunities, progress for all" is the theme for the celebration of International Women's Day at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. "To me, the conference served as a wake-up call. Although many Chinese women had received higher education and become mid-level managers, I was reminded of the challenges we still faced." as Li Xing writes on China Daily.

China has to improve women's education to make them a real force in society because empowerment of women in the country still lags behind the UN Millennium Development Goal. This in gist is what women leaders from across the Asia and Pacific region said at the Asian Women Parliamentarians' and Ministers' Conference Tuesday.