Woman sues to retire at same age as men
By Liu Dan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-09-14 11:07

A Chinese woman bank clerk has filed a lawsuit calling for the right to retire at the same age as male counterparts, saying the rule that forces women out at 55 discriminates against females, the Legal Evening Newspaper reports.

Man and woman are equal which represents on the traffic lights in Zwickau, a city in east Germany. [baidu]

The clerk, surnamed Zhou, works as a section chief at the Pingdingshan Branch of the China Construction Bank in central China's Henan province. She has refused to leave her post because she says she is still competent in her current job.

She claims that China's retirement policy -- formulated in 1949 when New China was founded - is now hopelessly outdated. Back then, it required women to retire at 55, five years earlier than their male colleagues.

The rules were mandated out of concern for women's "health," but many experts say the requirement is long outdated. Nowadays, women statistically outlive men. According to the statistic in 2000, the average longevity for Chinese man and woman are 69.63 and 73.33.

And professional women are increasingly challenging the retirement mandate's fairness, with many insisting that men and women should have equal access to the workplace.

Zhou said she wants her lawsuit to stimulate people to think about the current retirement policy's lack of fairness. After all, men and women study the same number of years, graduate and work at the same time in their lives while women are then expected to retire five years earlier than men.

She termed that policy a waste of education and labor.

Prolonging the retirement age for women does not necessarily mean that they are pursuing pure equality with men, the newspaper noted, but that women should be given the freedom to decide when they wish to retire.

The old retirement policy, it concluded, should be replaced by a new one better adapted to society's needs, the newspaper said.

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