When the Porcelain Doll Breaks Free
An Honest Portrait of Chinese Modern Women and Feminism
When half a dozen topless women paraded on a street in Guangzhou in 2014 holding up signs for female equality, it looked like the latest in a series of eye-catching stunts by young feminists. While today in China there are not that many radical feminists, feminism is by no means a novel phenomenon. In the late 19th century first outcries against foot-binding became vocal during the Self-Strengthening Movement, that were followed by calls for education for girls and female suffrage during the New Culture Movement in the 1920s. It was indeed the New Culture Movement that challenged gender stratification of Chinese society for the first time in an open and systematic way. Women’s role in society was only strengthened with the rise of the communist party. Mao’s slogan “Women hold up half the sky” significantly increased women’s social status and most importantly, brought women to the workforce on an unprecedented scale.
Hence, it is no exaggeration to say that over the past 100 years, the lives of Chinese women, their socioeconomic status and their roles in society have changed beyond recognition. Most importantly, female identity in China is currently being redefined. The world is witnessing a rising society of Chinese women who are more independent and more assertive than their older counterparts. Yet despite the vast improvement for women, gender inequality stubbornly continues to persist — perhaps not surprisingly so.
Double Happiness: Marriage in Contemporary China
You might think, because of China’s heavy gender imbalance (118 males for every 100 females), the odds for finding a suitable marriage partner would favor Chinese women. However, this is not quite the case, because men have high and narrowly-defined expectations when it comes to dating. Age and beauty standards play an important role. For example, single women after 27 are labeled “剩女,” leftover women, and will have a difficult time finding a marriage partner. By contrast, men over 30 and even 40 do not face this problem. An additional complicating factor in choosing a marriage partner are educational differences. Men mostly refuse to marry someone who has a higher educational level than themselves, and women traditionally view marriage as a way to “marry up” which is called “hypergamy.” The latter is the tendency of women to marry men of higher social status, which is a traditional practice in China. As a result, many highly educated women have trouble finding husbands, and are ultimately labeled as a “leftover.” The Women’s Federation is China’s state feminist agency that was founded by the Communist Party in 1949, and aimed to protect women’s rights and interest. In 2007 they officially defined “leftover” women 剩女 as “unmarried women over the age of 27,” creating an official term for Chinese society’s backwards attitude toward single women.
As if the above would not be enough, the dating scene gets even more troublesome. It is an understatement to say that young, urban professionals are extremely pressed for time. Hence, they have little time available to date and find suitable spouses. This being said, many turn to other methods such as dating apps, while some prefer the traditional business of matchmaking and marriage markets. However, such practices are rather contrived and leave little room for romance — or so one would think.
The Marriage Law enacted in 1950 incorporates new ideals of a changing China: “[This is] a marriage system based on the free choice of partners, on monogamy and on equality between man and woman [which] shall be applied. The lawful rights and interests of women, children and old people shall be protected.” This law interfered with family dimensions of patriarchy, made it possible for women to leave unwanted marriages, and proved itself a boon to women all over China.
Nowadays, young people are increasingly informed about the marriage process. For example, Wendy, a college student at Beijing Normal University, is a part of a club that discusses contemporary gender inequality issues talks about marriage markets. She agrees with the system of having parents look for potential spouses for their child because she believes that it is a good way for over-worked young people to find spouses. However, she does not agree with the fact that men have more power in choosing their wives than women do choosing their husbands, and although she thinks a husband with a house, a car and a job is more suitable, she wishes the process took love into account.
Speaking of romance, there is another difference to western notions and understandings of love and marriage. Mostly, men and women in China approach marriage as a contractual agreement that carries with it economic and status benefits. When assessing marriage prospects, money and practical considerations often trump love.
Modern Day Iron Girls: Working Women in Modern China
Until the twentieth century, it would have been completely out of the question for women to pursue a professional career. However, nowadays, Beijing women are breaking glass ceilings by unsettling traditional perceptions of gender, infiltrating jobs in every sector from policing the streets to working as corporate businesswomen. These women’s experiences exist on a spectrum, and cannot be generalized as adhering to a single narrative.
Now, most people in China, especially those who live in big cities, believe gender equality is a given. Gendered stereotypes of femininity are still an issue today, however, steps have been taken in the right direction. Today, women are seen working in every industry possible, ranging from teaching to exploring space. The assistant to the head of Dell in China, Vivian, shared her views on gender inequality and the modern Chinese woman. She informed us that, the higher a woman’s status in society, the less gender discrimination she will face. Furthermore, she herself has never experienced sexism or gender discrimination in the workplace.
A female traffic cop reamed me out for asking whether “the preference of men over women,” had affected her job or life. She then went on to explain that while China still has some problems, it has improved an admirable amount in the modern era. China is still a country in transition, but men and women are equal.
While some may be quick to label this denial of inequality as socialist rhetoric and Party efforts to effectively control people’s thoughts, I wonder if this speaks more to an absence of the kind of discourse and critical examination surrounding gender inequality that took place for decades, even centuries, before women obtained equal rights in the United States. In our interviews, the interviewees rarely focused on larger societal problems, rather, they spoke from their own experiences. Unlike America, China is a place where women did not campaign specifically for gender equality before they received rights. Feminist discourse was not produced by women on a large scale until the late 1970s, yet by that time women were given the same rights as men in the workforce. Is the process of obtaining women’s rights now operating backwards?
In China, with liberation in 1949, many women were given, for the first time, the rights to own land, to have a job, and to become financially independent. They were called to work in service of their country, and were treated equally. With these same rights came same clothes, same haircuts, same appearances resembling their male counterparts. These women were called “iron girls,” who worked as long and as hard as their male compatriots. Yet, ironically, while Chinese women were given more equal rights than ever before, there was no accompanying gender discourse coming from women. It was not until the late 1970s that a large number of women took a public stand on their own rights.
Since then, discourse on gender, femininity, and the role of women in society has flourished. Even though men and women today in China are relatively equal, barriers and stigma towards women still remain. For example, child-rearing is still predominantly considered a female role, and women also take on the lion’s share when it comes to house chores. In addition to these diminishing stereotypes, oftentimes working women are faced with blatant discrimination. According to Xiao Suowei, a gender studies professor at Beijing Normal University (BNU), in extreme cases women are at a great disadvantage in the workplace. Not only do women earn less than men, and have lower representation in managerial or high-level positions, but women are also faced with the possibility of losing their job or getting fired when opting to have a second child. The reason for the latter is simple — the company does not want to lose money due to paid maternity leave.
Nowadays there is ambiguity in issues of gender equality. Certainly, at least in cities such as Beijing or Shanghai, the situation is not as dire as western media might have you believe. However, there certainly gender issues that have not garnered major attention from the populus. So while the female traffic guard may feel empowered in her modernity, the fact is that there are still many issues of gender in Chinese society that are left unchecked.
Militant Feminism and the Modern Woman
Who is the modern Chinese woman? What role does she play in society? The modern Chinese woman may experience stigmatization and prejudice, however, many women recognize that through the enactment of laws and women leaders standing up for equal rights, major strides have already been taken towards equality. These women are content, and say they have balanced parenting roles in marriage and family, enjoy similar rights in the education and job sectors, and equal opportunity to break down normative gender roles.
In contrast to the women we interviewed, feminists in China believe their society must address widespread gender issues. These predominantly female activist groups are unlikely to sit on the sidelines, content in the gains already made. They continue to fight against domestic abuse, gender-based discrimination, and job-mandatory gynecological checks. In their fight for women’s rights, they even use performance-art like methods to make a statement: women clad in red-stained wedding dresses, or covered only in paint, or wearing diaper-like signs at their waists. These women identify societal issues, and work to better these problems, even going to great personal cost to fight for their causes.
The above outlined disparity between the views of the women we interviewed and the feminists who make headlines is common in every country. What is different is the blanket obstruction of general rights and obstacles to freedom of speech that affect these feminists. In 2015, five feminist activists were detained just before International Women’s Day and held for over a month for planning a protest of sexual harassment on public transportation. These women were taken for the crime of planning to organize a crowd and create a public disturbance, and were held in awful conditions at an undisclosed location for over a month. This is an undeniably significant deterrent from public collaboration with or support of feminist activism, and could be a factor behind average people’s rejection of the cause. This is an undeniably significant deterrent from public collaboration with or support of feminist activism, and could be a factor behind average people’s rejection of the cause.
Chinese feminists are often referred to as militant, guerilla or extremist. This is more evidence that Chinese feminists are not regarded as “modern women,” instead they are treated as though they are going out of their way to push an unimportant cause.
Modern China and Gender
China has a marked past of gender issues. Almost anyone can rattle off a list of past offenses — foot binding, female infanticide, bride price. All these things did happen, and have defined foreign perceptions of China for decades, or centuries. Yet these practices, induced by traditional thought and carried over from a formerly blatantly patriarchal society, often make gendered headlines regarding China, yet have less impact on modern society than other, ignored practices. The issues of modern China are not the issues that a westerner might assume, as they are problems quite similar to those in America or Europe. China is not the patriarchal system it was 100 years ago, and the above issues it has with regard to women and gender today should not be overlooked in favor of a witch hunt to fix issues that are no longer relevant to Chinese society.
Beijing women now have more access to jobs and equal marriages than ever before, yet Professor Xiao of BNU tells us that equal pay is still an issue, and, in addition to this, female unemployment has been going up at a faster rate than their male counterparts since the 1980s. Despite the fact that the average modern woman in Beijing does not seem to think that 重男轻女, or “preference of men over women,” is an issue, there is hard evidence that gender imbalance affects modern China. So while a food seller or a traffic cop might scoff at the idea that gender inequality affects her life in this modern age, or an office worker might dismiss marriage pressure as a thing of the past, there are still issues of gender inequality left untended.
Chinese Summary 中文总结
在过去的一百年中，中国女性已经摆脱困境，和男人一样成为社会主义中国的工作者，在现代社会中占有一席之地。但是这个角色是什么呢？现代中国女人是谁？那么，我们开始研究，找出她是谁; 她的工作，她的婚姻，特别是性别不平等在她的生活中扮演的角色。
通过与街头当地人的访谈——女工、白领、性别研究教授等，我们能够发现现代中国女性的各种观点。我们发现我们需要把这个工作分为三个部分才能最好地代表我们的研究问题，即：婚姻，工作场所和社会中。虽然中国历史上存在性别不平等问题，但在现代中国，我们看到在婚姻、工作场所和社会中，性别角色的平等性更高。为了证明这一点，我们小组的一个人对现代中国女人的婚姻方面进行了研究，另外两个人专注于办公室女性和做体力劳动的女性的工作经历方面。
妇女有被认为是劣等的历史，开始没有权利。然而，通过我们的访谈和研究，我们可以看到，从女性主义者提倡立法赋予妇女权利这一悠久历史来看，妇女的工作不仅局限在家庭范围内，所以现代中国女人可以争取到更平等的机会。
