It was widely accepted 200 years ago in China that a rich man who had several wives never defied his will, competed with each other on son-bearing and relished their hard-earned but possibly transient love from their husband, a scene of cliche in numerous Chinese fictional movies and TV dramas based on historical events. As modern society approached 100 years ago, women began to disobey the moral norm passed on from generation to generation, such as footbinding, a cruel, bloody way of keeping feet in a small size by curbing the growth of bones since childhood in order to fit the toxic beauty standard of that time. In the 21st century, Chinese society has ruled out having concubines and women are entitled to control their own body, albeit with limits, say the national policy in charge of fertility from the ‘one-child policy’ to the ‘third-children’ policy.
The most notorious one is the ‘one-child policy’ imposed from 1980s to 2010s. During that time, banners and slogans printed on walls such as ‘Girls and Boys are Equal’ were ubiquitous. On the one hand, This to some extent has raised people’s awareness on gender equality. On the other hand, couples that still pursued boy preference would choose to abort the girl embryo in want of a boy. As a result, according to Population Demographics from UNICEF, China suffers from drastically unbalanced sex ratio with above 110 male births per 100 female births between 1987 and 2017. [1]
Another consequence of the ‘one-child policy’ is the shrinking population. The government has realised this issue in recent years and put forward the ‘two-children policy’ for parents born in one-child families in 2011. In 2015, the policy began to cover all married couples. However, the census conducted in 2021 still shows grim demographics - the population is aging at a startling trend and birth rate is declining year by year although people are allowed to have more than one child, followed by the decreasing marriage rate from 9.9% to 6.6% in 2013 - 2019. [2]
During the same period from 2013 to 2019, women’s gender awareness began to rise with the rapid development of social media where people have more access to information and have more chances to air their opinions, among which topics on love and marriage always grab much attention. Although China’s online environment faces a more and more serious freedom crisis these years, when it comes to gender issues, there is more space than other politically related topics. Last month, a Chinese rapper Naiwan who gained reputation in a talent show in 2018 persuaded in her concert that girls should show more understanding to boys, who are forced to shift their dream to be, for example, a basketball player to buy property and a car in order to marry a girl. The connotation is that the burden of making those important and expensive purchases only falls on boys while girls stand around. Her speech stirred a wave of online backlash, condemning her of being blind to the gender privilege men enjoy as well as the injustice women suffer, which cannot be simply reconciled by the argument of who to afford property and a car. However, deemed as necessary items for marriage, property in particular, the price of which is increasingly prohibitive in the most promising Chinese cities, set a threshold for marriage.
Apart from gender privilege, domestic scandals such as widowed way of child rearing caused by men’s irresponsibility for their role of a father, domestic violence and troubled relation with the mother-in-law are also found as common issues. Simultaneously, as women have more power in the workplace, it becomes easier to gain financial independence on their own. As feminist thoughts gradually reach to an increasingly larger audience, more and more women become aware that marriage is only an option. Some extreme feminists even call married women ‘married donkeys,’ signifying that they are like donkeys laboriously working for their owner. However, men themselves should never be the sole target to fault. Social issues are behind it. The disrespect of labour rights coerces people to devote more time to work rather than family life. The enactment of the protection of women in the workplace is still insufficient, resulting in many companies unwilling to hire women who might be pregnant in the near future.
To boost the birth rate and even save the future of the country, the over-reaching fertility-control policy cannot help while the key problems to be solved lie in society. Gender opposition bred by inequality and the inability to have a balanced, happy, affordable family life should be addressed before people are urged to start a family.
References
Comments