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Gender equality is currently a great pursuit for many women throughout the world, and China is no exception.
Gender equality is currently a great pursuit for many women throughout the world, and China is no exception. In recent years, the status of Chinese women has admittedly improved, but some people think that there are serious problems still remaining. Wang Zhousheng is one of these critics, and today she will talk about her novel Gender: Female together with her thoughts and worries on the subject of Chinese women.
Gender: Female is a tragic tale which centers on a mother and her daughters. Yet this mother has seven daughters, and this novel in fact depicts three generations of this Chinese family in order to highlight the discrimination and persecution that women experience in love, sex, marriage and motherhood.
The author, Wang Zhousheng, is a Chinese woman presently residing in Shanghai, as well as working as an associate researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Literature, within the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The publication of her book Gender: Female has attracted attention from both academics and the general public. Broad and profound, this novel has been called a rare genre painting of the oppression and proscriptive sexual history of Chinese women.
"I write the family history of ordinary women. We are always saying that women and men are the same, but I have always been thinking about these questions, such as 'are we really the same?' And if we are the same, does it mean that we are equal?"
Wang Zhousheng says that her concern for the female condition began in the 1980s when she did her research on Ding Ling, a modern Chinese writer whose works depicted the hopes and disappointments of Chinese women. These depictions can perhaps best be found in Ding Ling's creation "Ms Sophie's Diary," as well as her commentary on International Women's Day.
This latter article bravely explores how the same problems afflicted women even after the liberation of the masses. Ding Ling's thoughts concerning Chinese women have exerted a profound influence on Wang Zhousheng, who continues to consider the inequality of the two genders.
"Sex and child-bearing are heavy burdens imposed on women, even nowadays, when it is usual for women to work outside the home. In fact, they are suffering from twin pressures, since besides their daily work, they also have to do the housework and give birth."
In Wang's novel, a woman gives birth to one child after another in order to satisfy her husband's wish for a son. Wang has gathered together many examples of her female acquaintances' real life experiences
"The mother in the novel has seven daughters, just like my mother who gave birth to 10 children. She is also typical of most women in the past, who kept giving birth in order to fulfill the husband's wish for a son. What's more, at that time a woman didn't have the right to decide whether or not to bear a child once she had been forced into pregnancy. "
The seven daughters lead different lives, but each life represents the typical lot of an ordinary woman—one may lose her life giving birth; whereas another may commit suicide because society will not accept her love. Another may hold on to her life but lose her love, or be forced into marrying a soldier.
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Producer: Liang Tao & Wei Xiangnan 
