Tag: Women and Girls

China Told Women to Have Babies, but Its Population Shrank Again

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China’s ruling Communist Party is facing a national emergency. To fix it, the party wants more women to more have babies. It has offered them sweeteners, like cheaper housing, tax benefits and cash. It has also invoked patriotism, calling on them to be “good wives and mothers.” The efforts aren’t working. Chinese women have been shunning marriage and babies at such a rapid pace that China’s population in 2023 shrank for the second straight year, accelerating the government’s sense of crisis over the country’s rapidly aging population and its economic…

China’s Male Leaders Push to Get Women to Stay Home for Family

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At China’s top political gathering for women, it was mostly a man who was seen and heard. Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, sat center stage at the opening of the National Women’s Congress. A close-up of him at the Congress was splashed on the front page of the Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper the next day. From the head of a large round table, Mr. Xi lectured female delegates at the closing meeting on Monday. “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture,” he said in a…

Chinese Women Who Defy ‘Beauty Duty’ With Buzz-Cuts and Bare Faces

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Legend Zhu was the conventional ideal of Chinese beauty. Tall with shoulder-length hair, she led her university’s modeling team, whose members were often called upon to strut down runways at campus fashion shows wearing body-hugging dresses and dramatic eye makeup. A recent college graduate, Ms. Zhu has attracted attention for her appearance once again, but in a far different way. Over the summer, she took to Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media platform known for its lifestyle influencers, to post a selfie with buzz-cut hair and a cosmetic-free face. “From a…

A Chinese Journalist Gave #MeToo Victims a Voice. Now She’s on Trial.

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After two years in detention, a Chinese journalist who spoke up against sexual harassment stood trial on subversion charges on Friday along with a labor rights activist, the latest example of Beijing’s intensified crackdown on civil society. Huang Xueqin, an independent journalist who was once a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement, and her friend Wang Jianbing, the activist, were taken away by the police in September 2021 and later charged with inciting subversion of state power. Their trial was held at the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in southern China.…

In China, More Single Female Home Buyers, Resisting Sexist Norms

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After she signed the contract for her new apartment in southern China, Guo Miaomiao, 32, ran through the mental list of what she would get to enjoy as a homeowner. A leather couch in the living room. A pumpkin pendant lamp that she’d been eyeing online. And, most important, a way to defy expectations in China about the role that a woman should play in a marriage. “I’ve seen too many cases, including among my relatives and friends, where the husband buys the house, and the minute the couple argues,…

Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

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The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years. The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even…

China Arrests ‘Zero Covid’ Protesters in Quiet Crackdown

Chin@Strategy

First, the accountant and the freelance writer were taken away. Then, the former tutor with a degree in English literature. And several days later, the police came for the editor at the Beijing publishing house. The four detained women were friends. They spent their free time in China’s capital as many curious, creative-minded young people did: hosting book clubs, watching movies, discussing social issues like feminism and L.G.B.T.Q. rights over barbecue. When protests against coronavirus restrictions broke out in November across China, including in Beijing, they attended. And now, they…

A Shrinking, Aging China May Have Backed Itself Into a Corner

Chin@Strategy

China’s leaders have long known that the country is nearing a demographic crossroads. Policymakers have warned that China must prepare for a slowly shrinking population and an era of fewer workers and more retirees. State media have urged young couples to seize the opportunity to have two or three children under relaxed family-size rules, to soften the looming economic crunch. And yet the sense of incipient crisis grew on Tuesday, when the government confirmed that the nation’s population shrank last year for the first time in six decades, sooner and…

‘Hidden Letters’ Review: Sororal Secrets

Chin@Strategy

Throughout history, women have survived the stifling strictures of patriarchy by using their own codes of communication — be it intergenerational secrets, whisper networks or gestures legible only to other women. Several centuries ago, in Jiangyong County in southern China, women went a step further, inventing an entire language that they used to write songs, poetry and furtive missives to one another. This fascinating language, Nushu, is the subject of the documentary “Hidden Letters,” though if you’re expecting an illuminating deep dive into its history, you’ll be disappointed. The director,…

Battling Violence and Censors, Women in China Become ‘Invisible and Absent’

Chin@Strategy

HONG KONG — When a prominent woman in China’s #MeToo movement took on a powerful man in court, it was the accused, not the accuser, who was held up as the victim. When several women were savagely beaten by men after resisting unwanted advances in a restaurant, the focus of the story pivoted from gender violence to gang violence. And when a mother of eight was found chained to the wall of a doorless shack, it was her mental fitness — not her imprisonment — that became the talking point.…