Incarceration of women
Within the last decade, the rate of incarceration for women in China has increased by 46%. Women make up only 6% of the total population of individuals in prison within the country. While it is difficult to correctly evaluate the statistic regarding the total number of women incarcerated due to the underreporting of these cases, China is on track to imprison more women than the United States.
Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries
In the United States, women make up more than one tenth of the whole prison population. In most countries, the proportion of female inmates to the larger population is closer to one in twenty. Australia is the exception where the rate of female imprisonment increased from 9.2 percent in 1991 to 15.3 percent in 1999.