Feminism

Under Chinese law, unmarried women are not allowed to freeze their eggs for in vitro fertilization. Xu Zaozao, a 31-year-old single woman, says it is time to change the rules to give women more control over their bodies. Xu has filed a lawsuit against the hospital that denied her request to freeze her eggs. The case brought attention to the plight of women struggling to access IVF in China.

A Chinese government-run charity aimed at helping poverty-stricken girls finish their schooling has prompted an online outcry after it was found to be funding boys’ education as well.  Despite a growing awareness of gender equality in urban China, girls, especially those in rural areas, still lag behind in their access to education due to long-held favoritism toward sons. To help provide education for poor girls, the state-run China Children and Teenagers’ Fund launched the Spring Bud Project in 1989.  The project’s promotional materials have almost entirely featured women, and China’s first lady, Peng Liyuan, is the charity’s special ambassador. But social media users found this week that a

A Chinese professor has been sacked by a prominent university in Shanghai after a sexual assault allegation against him prompted public outrage.  Last weekend, a part-time graduate student at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics accused the associate professor, 55-year-old Qian Fengsheng, of sexual assault.  In a detailed online post, the student said the professor had been sending her suggestive WeChat messages since September. On November 16, he offered to answer the student’s academic questions in his car – only to drive to a deserted road, where he allegedly locked the car, kissed her forcibly and sexually assaulted her, according to the post.  The 28-year-old student, who w

American teacher Kim Lee has been hailed as a role model for domestic violence victims in China since 2011, when she initiated divorce proceedings against her celebrity husband in a landmark case that made legal history.  But Lee’s status as a voice for abused women came under attack last week, when she said she had forgiven her ex-husband. “My [ex] husband is a flawed person. His violent acts are beyond doubt, illegal and wrong,” she wrote in a long post in Chinese on the Twitter-like Weibo on Thanksgiving.  “But he is also the one who smiled like a child while feeding goldfish… more importantly, he is the father of my three lovely daughters.” The post has gone viral and shocked internet u

A famed Chinese beauty blogger has ignited national debate about intimate partner violence after she posted a video purportedly showing herself being victimized.  “I am breaking the silence. I hope no woman will have to live with what I went through,” Yuya, who has about one million followers on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, wrote in a post on Monday.  Nov. 25 is the Day for the Elimination of Voilence against Women. A 28-year-old online celebrity elaborated a video to reveal violence of her ex-boyfriend, combining solid evidence and testimony of other women. This strong individual action already gets 120 million hits. pic.twitter.com/gqxd27MCvv — FreeChineseFeminists (@FeministChina)

China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing applied its carpooling “curfew” to all users on Thursday after the company was widely criticized for closing the service to female passengers after 8pm.  Didi said on Wednesday it would relaunch the UberPool-like service, named Hitch, later this month after the rape and murder of two female passengers, which plunged the company into crisis.  Didi had said it would begin a trial run starting in November in seven cities with improved safety features. Men would be able to use the carpooling service from 5am to 11pm, while women can access it from 5am to 8pm.  The earlier hour for women prompted outrage on social media. Gender equality advocates had called

Chris Zou had just broken up with her boyfriend when she learned she was pregnant. She shared the news with him and, despite his opposition, decided to raise the baby alone. Three years later, Zou is blazing a legal trail for China’s growing number of single moms. Zou, 43, works at a multinational company in Shanghai. She has managed to provide for her son Xinxin alone and has navigated the complex process of getting him identity papers.  But she has so far been unable to make a claim for her employer-provided maternity insurance. Local authorities told her she could not lodge a claim without providing a marriage certificate and the father’s information details. Believing single mothers had

Until recently, a Chinese programmer was working on a facial recognition project that compared women’s social media selfies with stills from porn videos. After a storm of criticism, he’s shut it down. Programmers are mocked on Chinese social media as jiepanxia – men willing to enter into a relationship with a woman who has had a number of sexual partners. The developer, who went by the pseudonym Li Xu, claimed his goal was to help male programmers identify “promiscuous” women who had appeared in sex videos. Victimization of women because of their previous sexual lives strikes me as one of the most illegitimate purposes I can think of Marcelo Thompson, privacy expert In an interview last mont

A longstanding rule limiting the number of women in police colleges has triggered an intense debate on Chinese social media about a woman’s ability to work in law enforcement. A recruitment notice from the Shandong Police College, posted on China’s Twitter-like Weibo on Tuesday, says it is looking to admit 1,300 students, but the number of female students should not exceed 15%. Many Chinese police colleges have held the 15% cap on female recruits, citing the high risks and heavy workload involved in police work, but the rule was seldom challenged – until this week. A growing awareness of gender gaps in China has put the police quota under greater public scrutiny. Over the past two days, fem

Taiwan’s iPhone billionaire Terry Gou has apologized for saying that his wife has no right to intervene in his presidential run. Gou, the founder of the largest Apple supplier, Foxconn, told local media last week that his wife, Delia Tseng, had left home in protest after he announced his bid to join the competitive 2020 presidential race. But 68-year-old Gou, Taiwan’s richest man, said he would run anyway. “The harem should not intervene in politics,” Gou told the Taiwan Television News, referring to a long-standing practice in imperial China forbidding women in the palace to take part in the running of the empire. “My wife is 24 years younger than me... She doesn’t understand the importance