The Congress of the Communist Party has laid bare the glaring gender imbalance in the upper echelons of Chinese politics, with not a single woman making up the 24-member Politburo for the first time in at least a quarter century.

As Xi Jinping and his allies concentrated power over the weekend, the party’s top female leader withdrew.

Veteran politician Sun Chunlan, a vice prime minister who oversees China’s health policy, was absent from the Central Committee’s list released on Saturday, meaning she has resigned.

In the world’s largest political party – which has 96 million active members – women have never had much power and now have even less.

They make up just five percent of the party’s new 205-member Central Committee, while the seven-member Standing Committee — the pinnacle of China’s power — remains an all-male club led by Xi.

Sun, 72, was the only woman in the former Politburo, the party’s executive body.

Often dispatched to inspect Chinese cities, the former party leader of Fujian province and the Tianjin city government became the public face of the zero-Covid policy, ordering tough measures everywhere, earning her the nickname “Iron Lady”.

But figures like Sun are a rarity in Chinese politics, where male patronage networks and entrenched sexism have hampered the careers of promising candidates, experts say.

It is a far cry from the promise of the Communist Party’s founding father, Mao Zedong, that “women carry half the sky.”

“The Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to women’s rights, I think, is more of a commitment to promoting women’s economic rights,” said Minglu Chen, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney.

“It’s really about: ‘Women should go into paid work’.”

Chen added that the Communist Party is inherently a male and patriarchal institution from its roots as a social movement to the present day.

China is hardly unique in its lack of women in politics.

A dominant social conservatism and domestic repression of women’s rights activism have made it difficult for women to resist the expectation that they prioritize family life over their careers.

The state has met those expectations by encouraging women to have babies to offset China’s rapidly aging population. This has particularly annoyed young women, in part due to the lack of political support for working mothers.

“A lot of women talk about not being able to reconcile the dual roles of being a good mother, wife and worker,” Chen said.

She added that most provincial officials selected for promotion have multiple college degrees – a requirement that disadvantages women.

Many informal patronage networks also develop through frequent contacts in restaurants in heavily male – and often alcohol-heavy – environments.

“Many of Xi’s former male colleagues in Zhejiang and Fujian are now members of the Politburo,” said Victor Shih, a political science professor at UC San Diego.

“But none of his former colleagues made it into the Politburo or even into top positions in the province.”

China also has a low retirement age for women – 55 for women civil servants compared to 60 for men in the same profession, rising to 60 for women civil servants at deputy level and above.

Ministers are expected to retire at 65, while central leaders mostly adhere to an informal upper age limit of 68.

China introduced an informal quota system in 2001, mandating a woman at all levels of government and party except the Politburo. But without a proper monitoring mechanism, this was casually enforced.

“If we had seen a better quota system, strictly enforced, then we would start to see different results,” Chen added.

“The dominance of one party has also led to this.”

The Politburo has admitted only six women since 1948, only three of whom became vice prime ministers, and no woman has ever made it onto the Elite Standing Committee.

Observers had hoped Sun would be replaced by Shen Yueyue, chairwoman of the All-China Women’s Federation, or Shen Yiqin, who became the province’s third-ever party leader when she was appointed Guizhou chief – but not a single woman was promoted.

Although women make up about 29 percent of all Communist Party members, very few of them manage to rise from grassroots positions.

According to Shih, the proportion of women on the Central Committee has fluctuated between five and eight percent over the past two decades.

“Discrimination at lower levels prevents them from reaching high-level positions,” he said.

“Because women hold more marginal positions at lower levels, they enter government later than men and are forced to retire earlier than their male counterparts.”