Scarcity of male schoolteachers in China is causing boys to lose their masculinity, a top official has said.
Weng Guoxing, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory group, suggested raising the ratio of male teachers in primary and middle schools, the China Daily reported.
He said the gender ratio of teachers was imbalanced in primary and middle schools, especially in kindergartens.
In Qingdao in October 2011, a survey showed that there were only 20 percent male teachers in the city's nine primary schools and only 30 percent in 10 middle schools, he said.
Statistics showed that in kindergartens across the nation, there were only 10,000 male teachers among the one million teachers.
Weng attributed the imbalance to an imbalance in colleges with a ratio of men to women students at 15:17.
He said many male graduates preferred not to be teachers as their income was less than many other professions.