Hello, I’m Jiang Lai.

In Module One, we followed a woman through life: school, workplace, organizations, marriage, childbirth, and care. Again and again, we returned matters dismissed as “her own problem” to their institutional setting.

Beginning here, we formally compare gender and public policy worldwide, approaching the previous episode’s question from another angle:how do countries respond to costs borne by families and disproportionately by women?

The available tools are limited and fall broadly into five groups: cash benefits, public services, pensions and retirement systems, fiscal investment, and legal protection.

Today we examine the most direct and most discussed: cash payments. Worldwide they appear chiefly in birth support, which will anchor our comparison.

Begin with China. Birth-support policy has advanced in the past two years.