Annotation :::: The paper focuses on political science, basic democracy, and administration, and examines the situation of improving the proportion of women members in mountain village committees to analyse the gender consciousness in public policy and its effects. Women in the countryside prove to be an important force in villagers’ autonomy, and especially when men go to cities for work, women in mountain villages play a significant role in rural development. Using the methods of documental study and field research to discuss and analyse traditional social discrimination against women and the background of village administration, the paper finds the current situation of women’s participation in rural politics is not positive. According to the authors, gender consciousness should be adopted in the primary policies of mountain villages, and equal rights for women can be realized through policy intervention. The paper is supported by the Foundation Project titled “Shanxi Provincial Soft-Science Project for the Year 2009 – A Research on the Participatory Mechanism for Constructing Socialist New Countryside”, numbered 2009041021- 04.
