China's gender conservations must go offline to empower everyone
One evening, as we walked along the river after dinner, my father hesitated before speaking. 'I raised you without gender expectations,' he began. 'But at a recent business dinner, someone said I should have taught you that family matters most for women. Now, I wonder if I did the right thing.'
His vulnerability caught me off guard. For the first time, we discussed his fears, my dreams and my values. I deeply appreciated his non-biased way of raising me. Now, he proudly tells me how he challenges people who hold traditional gender values while advocating for diverse life choices. However, I couldn't help but wonder: why are these moments of connection so rare? While such moments of connection bring hope, the dominant conversation around gender plays out online – and in a much more divisive way. In 2020, the comedian Yang Li brought gender issues to the centre of China's public discourse with a controversial line: 'How can he look so average and still have so much confidence?'
The show on which she made that joke garnered about 100 million views per episode on average. That single sentence caused an uproar on social media, sparking a 'gender war' that has only intensified since then.
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China's new wave of young women stand-up comedians tackle stereotypes China's new wave of young women stand-up comedians tackle stereotypes
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