White-collar ladies in foreign-funded enterprises always face a dilemma between family and career.

A survey on remuneration and life of women employees in Shanghai's foreign-funded enterprises released by Fudan University's Social Gender and Development Research Center indicates that 58.6 percent of women who have ever given birth to a baby cannot enjoy or have to give up their maternity leave, and white-collar ladies suffer from dual pressure from both family and career.

The research center distributed 900 questionnaires targeting enterprises funded by investors from the US, Sweden, Singapore, France and the UK and collected 854 valid questionnaires.

The survey shows that after the delivery, few fathers will take a maternity leave while 58.6 percent of mothers cannot enjoy or have to give up their maternity leave. Men are usually entitled to a three-day maternity leave while women will have a leave of three to four months.

According to experts, nowadays there still exists a false concept in the society that child bearing and raising have nothing to do with men. Moreover, many women miss opportunities of promotion or are even deprived of the original post and remuneration for maternity leave. The issue of child bearing gives rise to special pressure on women and results in that quite a lot of women dare not take maternity leave.

Some white-collar ladies choose to give up or delay child bearing because of tremendous pressure from work and studies or the desire to maintain the present high quality of life, while others feel mentally and physically exhausted to take care of both their career and family after becoming a wife and mother.
 
(China News Service February 23, 2006)