China - Empowered Women a Side Effect of One-Child Policy

[kuri]

I found this interesting:

It may have been a while since you heard the words “women’s lib,” but the idea has arrived with a vengeance in China, where women are becoming empowered like never before.

...

In a 2004 report, sociologists at China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission traced the new attitude to the one family-one child policies of the 1980s. The traditional Chinese preference for sons over daughters led to an epidemic of illegal gender-related abortion, creating a significant imbalance among young adults today. In some parts of the country, men outnumber women by as much as 20 percent.

In families that did have daughters, the one-child policy meant most girls were raised as only children, lavished with esteem-boosting attention from parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents in China’s multi-generational households.

As a result, China now boasts a generation of educated career women in great demand by suitors. But that interest isn’t always reciprocated.

While this seems like very much an urban phenomenom, it's kind of interesting to see it play out. I still have major ethical objections to the one-child policy (forced abortion is just as bad as forced pregnancy), but I think it's interesting to see the change in parenting that appears to have taken place due to this policy.

I found out about this from Feminist Philosophers.

[peppermint]

Sounds about right, though Communist China has always been egalitarian in its own way.   The Communist motto, "women hold up half the sky" (Exhorting women to join the work force and be treated equally) would've seemed revolutionary in  Confucian context, which is where the preference for sons comes from.

Also, Mao condemned the tradition of  footbinding, which had effectively hobbled middle and upper class women from early childhood onward, in the name of beauty. Of course this led to the Red Guards ostracizing, abusing and sometimes killing elderly women with bound feet,  but from what I've read, I don't think anyone was treated well in China at that time