'Birth-friendly' jobs boost options for working mothers

Female 'utopia'

In Jianshan village in Chengdu, Sichuan province, a group of like-minded working women have struck out on their own to control their work lives.

In 2019, Zeng Jiao left her busy office job to establish a "natural healing shelter" at Lezhi Farm for disaffected working women. Since then, Zeng and her all-female team have seen their business revenue grow from roughly 129,000 yuan in 2020 to over 3 million yuan last year.

Offering diverse services including natural food products, camping, photography and activities planning, the farm has organized over 1,000 activities and serves more than 5,000 clients per year. Team members come from diverse backgrounds, including Fortune Global 500 companies, NGOs, big State-owned enterprises, education groups, and multichannel network agencies.

The women share the same goal of building a "utopia" for office workers aged between 25 and 45 who find no connection to or relevance in city jobs, or are simply not able to relax and enjoy their lives.

"At the start, we were only three girls who knew little about building, operating and managing a business. It was our clients who generously shared their practical experience and knowhow with us," said 28-year-old Zeng.

She said those sharing their business knowledge were glad to see Lezhi grow into the workplace utopia they themselves had failed to build. "Lezhi is not only our business, but is supported by a crowd of people," Zeng said during a training camp organized by Swiss banking giant UBS AG and the Rural Women Development Foundation of Guangdong province in February in Shanghai.

For the third year, the two parties joined hands to support rural women, with a special focus on entrepreneurship.

Women aged between 30 and 40 accounted for about 60 percent of the 25 entrepreneurs at the training camp. Various projects were presented in sectors such as agricultural products, handicrafts, cultural tourism, housekeeping services, farming, public welfare and social services.

Sun Wanying, a 35-year-old woman from Harbin, Heilongjiang province, is finding her roots in a Chengdu village as well. Fascinated by agriculture, she saw promising prospects in rural areas and launched Gugu Farm in 2016. Over the past eight years, it has expanded to 75 mu (5 hectares) from 2.88 mu, generating revenue of over 780,000 yuan in 2024.

Benefiting from her team's efforts in applying advanced agricultural technologies, she hopes to popularize these techniques in villages, train more locals to use them, and increase their incomes while boosting the sustainable development of agriculture and other rural industries.