Gender bias in spotlight after soft sentence for baby girl's murder

ZHANG AIFEN, a woman from Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province, wanted to have a grandson so she kept encouraging her daughter-in-law to give birth to a child. However, when her daughter-in-law had a female baby last November, she was so angry that four days after her granddaughter was born, she killed the baby by stamping on her head. The woman was recently found guilty of murder by the local court, and received a penalty of 10 years in prison, a light punishment in the eyes of many netizens. Beijing News comments:

According to the Criminal Law, the penalty for murder should be capital punishment, life imprisonment, or 10 or more years in prison. So a 10-year prison sentence is rather light.

The Nantong Intermediate People's Court said it gave her a light penalty because "she was forgiven by the relatives of the victim and the neighbors".