Women should cherish their lives: Scholar

BEIJING - If a woman's happiness index includes the four areas of work, marriage, children and parents, few can be happier than Chen Yunying. In addition to academic achievement, she has been blessed with a happy marriage to a powerful man as well as children.

Yet few women probably also share her sorrow over political barriers preventing her from seeing her elderly mother in Taiwan as often as she would like.

After graduating in 1987 with a doctorate in education from George Washington University, Chen is now a well-known expert in special education on the mainland.