Women in China Face Rising University Entry Barriers BEIJING - On the last day of August, Xiong Jing and two friends shaved their heads in Beijing to protest a growing trend in Chinese universities in which women increasingly must score higher than men to get in and face unofficial but widespread gender quotas that favor men. The three women were outraged when the Education Ministry said in August that the practices were in the "national interest." They conducted their action in the privacy of an apartment, since any kind of protest in the Chinese capital was considered risky. The day before, in the relatively freer southern city of Guangzhou, four other women shaved their heads in public and gave the Education Ministry a "zero" score for fairness. In all, Ms. Xiong said, about 20 people around China - mostly women but some sympathetic men, too - shaved their heads to protest the rules. Their protest was inspired by three female artists who shaved their heads in public here in March to call for greater women's rights. "The Education Ministry's response made us really angry - it's just such a pity," Ms. Xiong said in an interview in Beijing, her normally shoulder-length hair reduced to stubble. It's illegal too. The Education Law forbids discrimination on several grounds including gender. And the Education Ministry is allowing it. No one is quite sure when gender quotas and gender-based admission scores were first implemented; but by now, they appear to be deeply entrenched, according to Chinese news reports that published publicly available admission criteria for the gaokao, the nationwide university entrance exam, as evidence. Several of the universities in question, including the University of International Relations, declined to respond to requests for information, referring queries to the college's propaganda or international affairs offices, which did not respond. An official who answered the telephone at the Teaching Office at the China University of Political Science and Law said the school did not have gender-based enrollment policies. For criminology, she said, "female students must account for less than 15 percent of students because of the nature of their future career," but women were scoring so well that in practice a higher percentage were being admitted. She declined to give her name and did not elaborate on her comment. The practice began at least as early as 2005, according to Chinese news reports, and was in response to the rising numbers of women getting into universities, where they are starting to outstrip men in some areas, especially languages. In 2004, women made up 43.8 percent of undergraduate students, rising to 49.6 by 2012, according to Education Ministry figures cited by The 21st Century Business Herald. In master's programs, women made up 44.1 percent of students in 2004, rising to 50.3 by 2010. Among doctoral candidates in 2010, however, just over 35.4 percent were women, up from 31.3 in 2004. In July, the Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper in Guangzhou, said the practice of discriminating in admissions was "extremely clear," calling it "the male-female difference." "In science courses at the China University of Political Science and Law, the bar is at 632 points for women but 588 for men," the newspaper said, providing other similar examples from other colleges. The practice was especially entrenched at police or military-affiliated universities, it noted. It was also common at language schools. It was reported in July that the Shanghai International Studies University had lowered the bar of entry for male applicants to language programs in Hebrew, Arabic, Ukrainian, Korean and Russian. University administrators "believe that Arab nations don't want to deal with women," Ms. Xiong said. "So they make it harder for women to get in to study Arabic," a language that is not commonly studied in China.