Chinese women stumbling on the way to gender equality

Janet Lin
Janet Lin
Sep 3, 2018 · 5 min read

By Janet Lin

Three female students hold a piece of paper written “This is sexual harassment” with their thumbs-down gesture standing in front of a red banner, which stirred up a debate on the Weibo, the Chinese Twitter-like platform.

Some netizens said these three students overreacted, exaggerated and misunderstood what feminism really is while others support them for fighting for dignity.

The sentence written in a red banner hung upon in Shandong University Weihai Branch arouse controversy and was under fire in mainland China on March 8. Female students who regard the content as gender discrimination condemned “Your children can have 26 or 27 godfathers.”

The protestors and their supporters said there is an apparent sexual metaphor indicating that male students assume themselves as female student’s future husband or their children’s godfather subconsciously. The “godfather” is called “gan die” in Chinese, impliedly referring to the man who has a mistress in Chinese society.

The male students defend to themselves that there exists the possibility that female fellow classmates marry to their male counterparts.

Every year as International Women’s Day approaching, a grand celebration of girl’s day on March 7 sweeps through in mainland China.

The Girl’s Day springs from Shandong University in late 1980s with the initial purpose of “foster communication between male and female students at universities.”

However, the focus on girl’s day in recent years has been swerved to a bizarre convention. In order to show their respect to female students in universities, male students would hang the creative and attention-grabbing slogans written on red banners in the campus, which has gone viral in mainland China.

But are they on the right track of achieving gender equality? Many female college students and feminists cast doubt on it this year, resonating with the “#Metoo” and “Time’s up” movement over the globe.

Businesses seize this holiday as an opportunity to have a sale, even changing the “Girl’s Day” and “Women’s Day” to “Queen’s Day” or “Goddess’s Gay.”

The advertisement is all about how buying can turn a woman into a queen. Numerous online shop owners from Taobao, Alibaba’s online bazaar, launch new product or product portfolio with the advertising slogans like “Love her. Buy for her.”

A commentator said in The Paper, the translation of Women’s Day in Chinese — Fu Nv’s Day, is one of the crux of the phenomenon. Fu Nv has the implication of married women with not-that-attractive appearance and image, which misleads people to have a stereotype perception of “Women’s Day.” It also reveals that Chinese people’s discriminatory attitude towards married women and aged women.

Social Media

Social media cannot escape its doomed fate either. A Chinese famous feminism organization ’s Weibo account, Feminist Voices, has been banned for using for 30 days. This nongovernmental organization, founded in 2009 said, this action might be associated with its repost about a women’s planned strike on March 8 in the United States.

Pin Lu, a founder of Feminist Voices, responded to New York Times, “They want to take away our voice.”

Egregious sexual inequality is still rampant in the mainland China either among workforce as well as university campus.

Campus

A Beihang University graduate Chao Xiao said, postgraduate recommendation is a hotbed for gender inequality raging in Beihang, where the male/female ratio is 3.56:1. Senior-year students have access to enroll in the graduate school through professor’s recommendation, which implies that the decision is almost depends on professors.

“If a straight-A female student with excellent academic and extracurricular performance as well as great promising development competes with a male student with 3.6 Grade Point Average and mediocre academic potential, then professor probably choose the women,” said Xiao. But if a female candidate and a male candidate with almost the same qualification, then the boy is definitely the lucky one without a doubt, she added.

She explained most professors including female professors hold the view that men are tougher than women and more likely to bear the criticism. “As far as many professors concerned, female students might burst into tears when professors are criticizing their academic research or project,” said Xiao.

Work Force

Sex inequality is no stranger to job seekers in the recruiting market. The recruitment notices usually do not explicitly stipulate sex ratio.

The unspoken rule is that maternity leave exert unproductive influence on companies productivity. Human Resources department might not make a clear statement that they do not hire women.

Lihong Huang, who is a senior department manager in Xiamen Port Holding Group Co., a state-owned business in Xiamen City, said, Human Resource officers and senior officers would not expressly state any gender proportion and preference during recruitment.

Huang added, “This is the unspoken rule that employers and job seekers have already known that male is always easier to get in the company and we would use different excuse to reject female candidates.”

Shiyi Qin, who works for Guangdong Guangye Group Co. Ltd, said managers tend to assign works to male workers rather than their female counterpart. She added that it is not because male workers do a better job but out of some reasons, superior just like male subordinates more.

Working for China Life Insurance Company Fuzhou Branch, Xinyi Chen said, the maternity leave plays a vital role in the working performance evaluation. “Once you got pregnant, your performance evaluation of that year would be impacted seriously and you are bound to be excluded from Grade A performance.”

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) provide well-rounded welfare, particularly maternity leave, to female employees, which might be a trigger to gender inequality in recruitment.

Government department and public institution recruitment currently is slightly fairer than SOEs due to the exam system. Those who intend to work for public institution or government department have to pass the examination with limited availability. In this situation, sex discrimination could be avoided to a larger extent.

According to Human Right Watch, 30,000 recruitment advertisements posts specified “men only,” “men preferred,” or “suitable for men.” Many of ads requires women should have physical characteristics which is not related to work.

Alibaba, the technology giant company, once post recruitment ads boasting that there are many “beautiful girls” to attract male IT job seekers to apply for their job.

After receiving criticism on gender discrimination from the Internet, Alibaba removed this ads and explained they just want to hire talents with humorous ads and they apologize for the negative impact.

“#MeToo” Sweep to China:

Accused of sexually harassing Xixi Luo and a few other students, Xiaowu Chen , a Beihang Professor has denied the accusation, which was seen as China’s first “Me Too.”

Tingting Wei, a program manager from Beijing Gender Health Education Institute wrote a report about an investigation on sexual harassment of Chinese in-school students and graduates.

This investigation conducted by Guangzhou Gender and Sexuality Education Center and Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, reveals that 69.3% interviewees has been sexually harassed in different ways. The number of women accounts for 75% of the number of victims.

In late 2014, another report published by China Women’s Daily News reveals 57% of women have suffered sexual harassment in a different form. The report based on a survey conducted by Women’s Federation and taken by female university students from 15 different universities.

Another survey taken by 1200 female students indicates that 44.3% of which were victims of sexual harassment including those even experienced two or three times. The survey also shows that 23% of female students consider the situation is “very serious.”

The hostility and inequality towards women in many fields upset many feminism activists and women across the mainland. Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch said “Chinese authorities need to act now to enforce existing laws to end government and private hiring practices that blatantly discriminate against women.”