Most of the women had been laid off from State-owned firms.

According to the Liaoning Provincial Labour Bureau, 750,000 people left their jobs last year alone, with half of them being women.

Women's organizations have played an essential role in the colossal task of helping so many people find new ways of feeding themselves and their families.

Gao Peng, chairwoman of Liaoning Women's Federation, said: "It is the responsibility of the women's federation to help laid-off women, especially those aged between 40 and 50, to restart their lives."

Aid provided by women's organizations is mainly in the forms of finance and training the women in new skills.

A women's re-employment fund was established in Liaoning in 1999 with a total sum of 3.5 million yuan (US$422,000) provided by provincial and city governments in Liaoning.

Interest-free loans, usually of between 2,000 and 20,000 yuan (US$241 and US$2,410), are provided to laid-off women who want to start their own businesses.

The establishment of small firms is encouraged as they require less investment and no complicated skills and are easy to manage.

With the fund, women's federations in the cities of Anshan, Chaoyang, Dalian, Fushun, Shenyang and Tieling have helped establish 83 small businesses, such as knitting mills, food and beverage processing and packaging factories, and woollen products factories, which employ more than 3,000 laid-off women.

(China Daily April 2, 2003)