Dramatic changes in women’s rights have been achieved in China where for millennia women were stereotyped as inferior to men, had no rights and served as slaves, concubines, and prostitutes. Marriages were arranged as early as infancy.
In 1949, foot binding was abolished, and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) was formed and supported by China’s Communist Party (CCP). After the CCP won the long Civil War, it took less than a year to liberate women and bring an end to everything mentioned in the first paragraph.
At the 10th National Women’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in 2008, Deputy-Chairwoman HuangQingyi said, “Sex discrimination in employment should be eradicated and the income gap between men and women should be further narrowed.”
It has also been reported that domestic violence is a severe threat to women. Chinese authorities reported fifty-thousand complaints annually, according to figures released by the ACWF. The domestic violence fact sheet shows this is also a problem in the United States. And it doesn’t help that the Trump administration in the U.S. has backed away from supporting rape victims and is supporting alleged rapists instead.
Sexual discrimination was supposed to have been abolished in China back in 1949, when Chairman Mao Zedong famously announced, “women hold up half the sky”, but it wasn’t. It has only been a few years since China outlawed sexual harassment.
Imagine this happening in China before 1949.
Laws may be passed to bring about change but changing a culture happens much slower.
According to Forbes.com, Canada is the best country in the world to be a woman, and India is the worst. The U.S. was ranked #6 of the twenty countries surveyed. The members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.
Starting with the I Ching, The Book of Changes, almost five thousand years ago, the central focus of Chinese philosophy has been how to live an ideal life and how best to organize society.
When the Communist Party of China gained power in 1949, previous schools of Chinese philosophy, except Legalism, were denounced as backward and purged during the Great Leap Forward and during the insanity of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Most Chinese think that true advancement and growth should only happen slowly, at a steady, measured pace, which means to grow but grow slow like an oak tree while following a well thought out plan to bring about change.
Even the United States doesn’t change that fast.
In fact, it took almost ninety years to free the slaves, and women first sought the right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention. Then seventy-two years later in 1920, American women finally earned the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted by Congress and was ratified by the states becoming a national law.
The last time women had relative freedom in China was in the seventh century during the Tang Dynasty when Emperor Wu Zetian, a woman, ruled the country.
Since 1982, when China ratified its Constitution, women in China have gained more freedom, power and rights than at any other time in China’s history including the Tang Dynasty when Wu Zetian ruled as the only female emperor in China’s history.
Anyone that does not consider this progress is stupid, blind and deaf.
Critics in the West have pointed out that under the Communists, no woman has ruled China, and I’d counter that no woman has ever ruled the United States—yet.
In 2013 Lin Yandong, a senior Party official responsible for winning over non-Communists, was elected Vice Primer of China, one of the country’s senor leaders. She’s now one of China’s four vice premiers making her not only the most powerful woman in China, but also one of the most powerful in the world. She is one of two women in China’s 25-member Politburo. The other woman is Sun Chunlan.
Chinese women’s participation in politics has grown since 1982. For instance, in 1952 only 12% of China’s National Congress (NPCC) was women. In 2014, of the 2,959 seats in the NPCC, more than 23% of the seats (699) were held by women compared to about 19% in the United States Congress. Out of 190 countries, China is ranked #58 versus the U.S. that’s ranked #76. – Women in national parliaments
“Chinese women leaders have much in common. They generally all have a good education background, being mainly science majors, and solid experience in government. They are of a caliber equal to that of their male counterparts,” an All-China Women’s Federation expert said. For the United States, I’m thinking of Sarah Palin—enough said.
If you hear anyone demanding faster change in China, be cautious. After all, China seems to be moving faster than the United States when it comes to women holding positions of power.
Why do so many of China’s critics in the West expect China to move faster than the United States?
______________________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
Dramatic changes in women’s rights have been achieved in a culture where for millennia women were stereotyped as inferior to men, had no rights and served as slaves, concubines and prostitutes. Marriages were arranged—sometimes at infancy.
In 1949, foot binding was abolished; the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) was formed and supported by China’s Communist Party (CCP). Change in China, as in the United States, has been a painful evolutionary process. However, the struggle for women to gain equality appears to have moved faster in China since the CCP came to power.
After the CCP was established in 1949, it took less than a year to liberate women and pass laws to speed this process along.
For a comparison, after the United States was established in 1776, it took one hundred and forty-four years until August 26, 1920 when the Congress voted in the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution giving women the right to vote.
At the 10th National Women’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in 2008, Deputy-Chairwoman HuangQingyi said, “Sex discrimination in employment should be eradicated and the income gap between men and women should be further narrowed.”
It was also been reported that domestic violence is a severe threat to women. Chinese authorities reported 50,000 complaints annually, according to figures released by the ACWF. The domestic violence fact sheet shows this is also a problem in the United States.
Role of Women in China Then and Now
Sexual discrimination was supposed to have been abolished in China back in 1949, when Chairman Mao Zedong famously announced, “women hold up half the sky”, but it wasn’t. It has only been a few years since China outlawed sexual harassment. Laws may be written to bring about change but change comes slowly.
Today, statistics show China has about 27,000 women and children’s rights protection agencies. However, China’s critics and enemies will only point out what they believe is wrong without giving credit to what has changed for the good of women in China.
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Subscribe to “iLook China” Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
“You must matter,” she tells the girls that are her students. “You must be independent.”
The teacher wants her students to know the alternatives so they have choices. She says, “You don’t change overnight. It takes time. The ideas have to sink in.”
The students are schoolteachers from China’s rural areas. They have come to Beijing for workplace training and to learn more about themselves.
Moreover, this is happening in Communist China and most Western critics have no idea what is going on.
The rural teachers study the Chinese Constitution to learn about their rights and responsibilities.
After all, men and women are equal under the law in China, but there is a long way to go to change the old ways of thinking to achieve that equality.
As in the US, women in China are not paid the same as men for the same jobs.
One of the schoolteachers from rural China said, “You come to believe that you are not as good as men. But I hope when I return to my town that I will have the strength to stand up for myself.”
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Tragedy has struck before with online dating like Krista Elizabeth Merry, a 15-year-girl, who vanished after meeting someone on the Internet. Love Fraud.com even offers 7 points to remember about dating and predators.
Knowing how dangerous looking for love can be on the Internet, it should come as no surprise to learn that the People’s Daily announced that China’s military leaders are taking online dating as a serious threat to national security and banned online dating for the troops.
Traditional Chinese Wedding
However, young military men are not in the army to become monks, so China’s officers have had matchmaking added to their duties. Source: IBN Live
Becoming a military matchmaker may not be so easy, because there is a growing shortage of women in China. CNN reported that some 24 million Chinese men of marrying age will find themselves without a wife by 2020. In that case, being in the military might be an advantage since patriotic Chinese women could move military men to the front of the line—that is if enough women are ready to marry.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
iLook China 