Women

A few people have asked what I think about the status of women in China. First, there is a difference between urban women and women who live in the countryside. I am more familiar with the former.

1. My overall impression is that there are many dichotomies in the status of women in China (and in American culture). Women have mandatory military training, but cannot be firefighters. Girls and boys have equal access to childhood education, but I overheard a female student say that men contribute more to the world because they can do things women can't do, like engineering and science. (Yes, that broke my heart.)  Women are expected to work while their child is young, just like their husbands do. But I think it's telling that the reported response to the high rate of suicide-by-pesticides in the countryside is to more strictly regulate the availability of pesticides.

2. My students tell me that especially in the north, women are expected to be subservient to men; in a relationship, if there is a disagreement, the man in always correct. In the south, I am told, it is the opposite: women hold the upperhand in the relationship. My southern students say they would never date a northern guy, and supposedly northern guys think southern guys are wimps. I haven't heard of a place where there is an expectation of equality. Chinese women are expected to marry and have a child; remaining single is not perceived as a socially acceptable option.

3. I'll never be as good a teacher or Chinese speaker as the male foreign teachers at my school. I am compared to them, not the other way around. Men automatically have 'face' and power because they are men. Women are expected to try and keep up. I've had to accept this in order to remain here with any modicum of contentment. It's not something I'd choose, but it's what I've accepted I will live with for two years as a part of living in this culture.

4. Chinese culture is changing rapidly. I don't understand all the changes, nor do I know where the status of women will land in China. I hope for the sake of my students and all the beautiful little girls I see here that they are able to live out their full potential, whatever that means for each of them. I wish the same thing for American women. I don't think the sexualization of young girls/women and the standard of beauty that is so prominent in American culture is a positive direction; it has been a relief to be removed from this aspect of American culture. A few weeks ago another American PC volunteer and I remarked that if the magazine cover we were looking at were an American magazine, her skin lines and tiny body bulges would have been photoshopped out. We were shocked to see a real-looking woman on a magazine cover. Sad for us.