STARTING in ancient times, the Chinese people began to explain the universe in terms of yin and yang. The sky is yang, the earth is yin. Man is yang, woman is yin. Just as the sky is above the earth, so man is above woman.

The theory saturated every social aspect of Chinese life - its manners, virtues, customs and culture.

When in the mid-19th century, the West for the first stepped into Shanghai - which was then a treaty port - they were shocked at the sight of the malformed smallness of the feet of Chinese women.

Some foreign women set up organizations to help liberate their unfortunate Chinese sisters from the tyranny of foot-binding. However, they may not have known that foot-binding was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the unfairness suffered by Chinese women.

For more than 1,000 years, the ideal image of women was that of obedient subordinates, illiterate and stumbling about on tiny feet.

Women were linked with causing trouble and were kept out of schools and forbidden from becoming involved in political issues. Even Confucius regarded women at the same level as "xiao ren" (villains) in his teachings.

Freedom of choice

To satisfy men's tastes, women bound their feet into tiny moon shapes. One legend has it that during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-960), the emperor Li Yu was said to adore women with small, delicate feet. This was said to be the origin of feet-binding for women.

Every woman had her feet bound with cloth from a very young age so as to stop their normal growth.

The coming of the West in the mid-19th century helped greatly in breaking the old practice. In Shanghai, many foreign women set up schools for women and help to publish newspapers for women. Their lifestyles also had a subtle effect in changing the lives of local women.

Some Chinese scholars also participated in the gender equality struggle which at that time mainly concentrated on providing education rights to women, ensuring freedom of choice when marrying and the abolition of foot-binding.

The first Chinese to campaign on the slogan "Men and women are equal", was Kang Youwei (1858-1927), the leader of the famous Reformation movement at the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

By the 1930s, women could be seen on the streets, in ballrooms and even working in factories and for various government authorities. But for various reasons, most women employees in factories had to do the heavy work and only 2.6 per cent of government posts were allotted to women.

The situation changed dramatically after Liberation in 1949 when the country put forward the slogan that "men and women are the same, and the physical disadvantages of women can be conquered". During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), saying that "women can't do men's work" was regarded as "feudalism".

'Iron women'

Women were encouraged to go into occupations once monopolized by men. "Iron women" were to be seen everywhere - women became train drivers, steel workers and construction workers.

On the streets, women wore the same-style clothes as men, which were bulky and in monochrome colours of green, blue, grey and black. The hairstyles were uniformly short. Those wearing different coloured clothing or growing their hair long were seen as having problems with correct political thinking. The gender equality campaign in China was even in advance of the rest of the world.

When China entered the 1980s, politicians and scholars started doubting the rationality of absolute gender equality. Women's physical disadvantages were accepted and women train drivers were transferred to railway bureaus to do office work while women workers in the construction industry were transferred to light industry.

Women's long suppressed enjoyment of dressing up came back to life. The political banners on street walls were replaced by large pictures of beautiful and fashionable women.

But accompanying the dropping of the country's once firm advocacy of the equality of men and women, factories became reluctant to hire women and the prejudice against women workers has been rising in the past two decades.

Room for improvement

An article in Women's Research published by the China Women's Federation said: "Although the government required that employment prejudice should be eliminated, it has never taken any solid measures to state that gender discrimination against women is illegal or to provide for any real punishment, and some government sectors themselves are prejudiced when enrolling civil servants."

However, a new round in the struggle for gender equality has kicked off in the new era. In cities, the focus is on equal working rights. And in the countryside, the long-existing ideology that "Men are superior to women" is still strong in people's minds. Aborting baby girls still widely exists. Statistics at the end of last year show that the proportion of new-born boys to girls had reached 116.86 to 100, one of the highest in the world.

(Star News)