A woman's place

Professors, social activists and farmers gathered at a seminar in mid-July to talk about the changing role of women in Chinese society. According to some academics, Chinese women were venerated in ancient China, then were oppressed and enslaved, and in modern times, have gained more respect.

As the seminar participants explored the past, there was discussion about how the development of Chinese characters reflected the status of women through the ages. There was discussion about secret women-written characters, and also talk about wedding dresses from various ethnic groups.

But it was a speech by Ma Guirong, a 38-year-old farming woman from Weining County, Southwest China's Guizhou Province - one of China's poorest areas - that opened people's eyes and revealed the reality that some Chinese women face today.

The Xinzhai Community, where Ma lives, is a mixed area of Han, Yi, Miao and Bouyei people and more than 90 percent of local women are illiterate.

Ma, herself a Miao, works as a temporary teacher because there are not enough certificated teachers in the remote area. Her monthly salary is 100 yuan ($13). Besides farming and teaching at the local primary school, Ma has developed a training program for local women.

Ma attended the seminar as a representative of the "Self-support Training of Women in the Xinzhai Community" project, which has been running for seven years. All work is voluntary and Ma has never been paid.

Depending on the farming schedule, local women gather up to three times a month for the training. Ma teaches Chinese characters, some simple farming technology, veterinary medicine, and how to deal with family affairs.

The most popular activity in the project is the celebration of Women's Day, a previously unknown festival for local women. In 2004, women in Xinzhai celebrated their own festival for the first time. Activities included singing folk songs of different ethnic groups, a sewing competition, and a push-and-pull competition for women. The funds for awards (basins, candies, and souvenirs) were raised by the women themselves, who donated sums ranging from 1 to 20 yuan ($0.13-2.60). Ma said the local men sat at a distance and watched.

"The local women found the festival very enjoyable and have celebrated it ever since," Ma says, noting that men also became involved since the second festival, giving helping hands wherever they were needed.

"Our village is very remote and poor, I just want to contribute something to the development of our community and to help women to express our own voice," Ma says.

The Seminar on Projects of Cultural Diversity and Social Gender, which was held in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, attracted several overseas experts.

Faye V. Harrison, chair of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Commission on Women, says Chinese women are redefining their roles.

"China is attracting global interest. I believe that Chinese women can determine who they are and what their role is in the civil society," Harrison says.

During her first trip to China in 1995, when the US researcher attended the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, Harrison got some general information about Chinese women. The seminar in Guizhou gave her deeper insights into the ethnic minority women in China.

Zhang Xiao, director of the Research Center of Ethnic Groups and Women Development of Guizhou University and organizer of the seminar, says women play a major role in China's cultural diversity.

"Cultural diversity and social gender are closely related. The first topic deals with the equality of cultures, while the second deals with the equality of genders," she says.

Liu Dalin and Hu Hongxia, two researchers with the China Sex Culture Museum, revealed how Chinese characters reflect the changing role.

According to them, such changes can be observed in Chinese written characters, which were created when the patrilineal society was replacing matrilineal society in China.

In Shuowen Jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary that was compiled in the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220), there are only three characters with the radical of "man", while there are 238 characters with the radical of "woman", which reflected the importance of women in the society.

The researchers put the characters with the radical of "woman" into three types.

First, surnames, such as Jiang and Ji, reflect the high status of women in the matrilineal society, when children knew their mothers but not their fathers.

Ji was the surname of the founder of the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-771BC) and the origin of many surnames in China.

Second, characters about goodness, such as hao (good) and miao (wonderful), display men's respect for women.

The third types are contemptuous characters such as nu (slave) and yao (demon), which reflect the low status of women in the patrilineal society.

"These characters about women display the complicated situations of women's status. This is a historical and cultural phenomenon that deserves much attention", according to Liu and Hu.

Zhang Xiao, director of the Research Center of Ethnic Groups and Women Development of Guizhou University, says that the general status of women in modern China is rising.

Zhang says that women are enjoying more opportunities for education thanks to the nine-year compulsory education system and other policies.

More and more countryside women go to work in the cities, while those who stay home often have to take more responsibilities because their husbands go to work in the cities.

"Chinese women are playing more important roles, but at the same time they have to work harder than before," Zhang says.

(China Daily 07/31/2007 page19)