The vulnerable majority

In June 2014, the Ministry of Education issued a regulation on college admission, stating that colleges and universities should have the same admission standards for male and female students. But to really achieve gender equality, there’s still a long way ahead.

Yuan Xin, a professor at Nankai University, said that in China, traditional values of men being superior to women are still very common. The sex ratio among newborns is 117 boys for 100 girls, and that "despite five consecutive years of decline, the number is still fairly high from a normal 103 to 107 boys born for every 100 girls."

Julie Broussard, project manager of UN Women, revealed in a 2012 speech that women in cities generally receive 67.3% of salary of what their male counterparts earn, and for those in rural areas, the number dropped to 56%.

"As men were the ones enjoying privileges, it pains them to really show empathy towards women," Xiao Meili said.

But few ever realize that "this is also a man’s issue too", as pointed out by actress Emma Watson in her speech in the UN HeForShe campaign launched in 2014.

According to Watson, in England, male success has put so much pressure on them that it has inevitably resulted in some young men’s mental illnesses and contributed to their suicides.

Gender equality is not about "man hating", it is about freedom, the freedom to reclaim parts people abandoned, and "in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves", she said.

No wonder Zhou Guoping wrote three days after his unwelcome post, "A masculine man could have a gentle heart, and a gentle woman could have a tough heart. The more characteristics of the opposite sex a person has, the more complete and abundant humanity a person possesses."