BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- This year's International Women's Day comes at a crucial stage in China's fight against the COVID-19 virus. Female medical staff have played a critical role in this battle.

 

In Hubei Province, the center of the epidemic, hundreds of thousands of female medical workers were put on the front line of the epidemic prevention and control, racing against time to save lives.

 

In other parts of the country, women also constitute the backbone of the "white soldiers."

 

Hospital wards are a battle field and not a second should be wasted to save lives. Women medical staff have fought day and night to rescue the COVID-19 patients, showing the noble spirit of benevolence, as President Xi Jinping put it on Sunday. He extended sincere solicitude to women fighting the COVID-19 virus at the front line.

 

Women members and cadres of the Communist Party of China, police, disease control personnel, community workers, journalists, and volunteers have fulfilled their obligations with loyalty, worked tenaciously, shouldered considerable hard work, and made important contributions to containing the epidemic with their actions, Xi noted.

 

On this battlefield without the smoke of gunpowder, women have fulfilled their duties with the spirit of patriotism, dedication, self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement.

 

Throughout the entire course of history, the progress of women has been indispensable to the progress of mankind. The founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 ushered in a new era for women in China, in which women enjoy a social status unseen in the history of the nation.

 

China has promulgated laws and regulations to fully protect women's economic rights and interests. Take the rate of women enjoying education as an example. In 2017, women accounted for 52.5 percent of students in regular institutions of higher education and accounted for 48.4 percent of postgraduate students, according to a white paper on the progress of women over the past 70 years released in 2019.

 

Chinese women are able to exercise their democratic rights, participate in economic and social development, and benefit from reforms and development on an equal basis. Women now can pursue their own fulfillment while gaining an increasing sense of achievement, happiness and safety, as witnessed by the historic accomplishments they have made so far.

 

China will continue to enhance gender equality as a basic state policy, give play to women's important role as "half of the sky" and support them in realizing their own dreams and aspirations in both their professional and private lives.