Women fail to crack China's glass ceiling as party picks new leaders

Beijing

EVERY time China's ruling Communist Party convenes a major gathering, such as the congress that just ended in Beijing, the list of delegates is hand-crafted in part to burnish the party's image as "representative of the masses" - including giving some prominence to those in more menial jobs and ethnic minorities.

Yet one group is chronically under-represented among the political elite: women.

The founding father of communist China, Mao Zedong, may have once said that women "hold up half the sky" but when the twice-a-decade par…