Efforts should be beefed up to ensure women being treated equally with men in their social and economic status, said a member of the Chinese top advisory body on Thursday.

Wang Shuxian, former vice-chairwoman of the All-China Women's Federation, proposed that more attention should be heeded to a balanced development between men and women. She also called for more legal moves in this regard.

"Economic growth does not necessarily mean women's progress and women are not natural beneficiaries of the overall social development," said Wang, worrying about Chinese women's unsatisfactorily low participation in politics and decision-making.

Meanwhile, some long-existing barriers and prejudice against women are still lingering around and continuously putting women in a disadvantaged position in economic and social development, at odds with the country's recently endorsed pursuit of harmony and balanced development, according to Wang.

"We still have a long way to go in treating women and men equally in Chinese society," warned the CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) National Committee member.

She pointed out phenomena such as the imbalance of the boy and girl babies born in the country, concubinage, prostitution, and trafficking of women and children in a speech to the full meeting of the Third annual Session of the 10th CPPCC National Committee here.

"The existing laws and regulations should be revised to guarantee women's equal access to the fruits of social and economic progress," said Wang.

In China's vast rural regions, most drop-out students are girls and women account for 70 percent of the illiterate population. Meanwhile, female civil servants are required to retire at the age of 55, five years prior to their male peers, widely considered being unfair to women who devoted at least the same energy to build up a career.

"Special attention should be paid to fix flaws in the country's law on compulsory education and civil servants to root out similar problems," said Wang, also suggesting that a more thorough and timely gender statistics be taken into consideration in the decision-making process of various government departments.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2005)