Last month, a popular Tibetan vlogger, Lamu, was brutally murdered by her ex-husband, sparking outrage across social media. The 30-year-old woman, who lived in an impoverished region on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and regularly blogged about her life there, had endured a decade of abuse from her violent husband. Lamu sought help from local police multiple times. However, on each occasion, they refused to intervene, citing the abuse as a ‘private matter’. Lamu divorced her husband twice to escape the violence. After threatening to kill their son, Lamu was forced to remarry him. When the abuse worsened, Lamu filed for divorce again. Despite his history of abuse, the local court ruled that as Lamu’s husband had greater financial resources, he would be granted custody of their two young children. Shortly after separating the second time, her ex-husband broke into her home, stabbed her multiple times, doused her in petrol, and set her on fire. Fifteen days later, Lamu died.

Lamu’s case is not an isolated one. Similar reports regularly surface on Chinese news and social media sites. Regardless, domestic violence continues to be seen as a private matter in China, and authorities are often unwilling to intervene, instead encouraging women to return to their abusive husbands and ‘work it out’. This behaviour reflects widespread beliefs that the sanctity of the family is paramount, and women who leave violent husbands are often blamed for destabilising the family unit.

The lack of state intervention in addressing domestic violence in China and a general unwillingness to promote women’s rights, reflects the concern over disrupting the ‘harmonious family’, and, as Chinese-American scholar Leta Hong-Fincher has argued, the stability of Chinese society.

Domestic violence is widespread in China

While official national statistics on the prevalence of domestic violence in China are not available, several studies reveal its pervasiveness. A 2016 study by the All-China Women’s Federation, found that 30 per cent of married women had experienced some form of partner violence. In a 2013 UN multi-country study, 52 per cent of men admitted committing physical and/or sexual violence against a partner. Women in rural China experience rates of violence almost double those in urban China.

Such violence is not confined to the boundaries of marriage either. A recent study in Beijing found that dating violence is rife among unmarried urbanites, with young women reportedly experiencing high rates of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by their boyfriends and casual dating partners.

Yet the legal structures in place to protect victims from violent partners are weak. After decades of campaigning by feminist activists, in 2016, China’s first Domestic Violence Law was introduced. Despite establishing new protections, including restraining orders and mandatory early intervention, in practice, the law has been poorly enforced. For example, women are responsible for gathering evidence of their abuse and there remains an overreliance on mediation measures. Crucially, marital rape is absent from the legislation, and the crime of domestic violence itself, is treated as a civil infraction rather than a criminal offence. Moreover, the new civil code stipulates a ‘30-day cooling-off period’ for divorce applications, which further undermines women’s capacity to escape abusive environments.

Women hold up half the sky, or do they?

Domestic violence thrives in social contexts that undermine women’s rights. The power and privilege afforded to men drive gender inequality, and the gender unequal attitudes, behaviours, and policies that cut across Chinese state and society precipitate this violence.

Chinese feminists have actively campaigned against gender inequality, on issues such as sexism in employment and university admissions, sexual harassment, and queer rights. Despite having to constantly adapt to censorship and the relentless threat of police harassment and intimidation, the strong feminist voices of Chinese activists continue to advocate for women’s rights. The viral outrage over Lamu’s murder is a testament to the veracity of these voices.

Gender equality is enshrined in the Chinese constitution, yet China is a deeply unequal society. In the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Gender Gap report, China ranked 103 out of 149 countries. Under Xi Jinping, women’s rights continue to be eroded and patriarchal power structures strengthened. This has occurred at multiple levels of Chinese society. Female political representation is jarringly absent, and voices of dissent are harshly silenced. This was most evident in the arrest of the Feminist Five, in 2015, after their vocal campaigns against domestic violence (notoriously performed in bloodied wedding dresses), sexual harassment, and insufficient sanitation facilities for women. In 2019, International Women’s Day was rebranded as “Goddess Day”, an intentional distancing from its feminist roots in advancing gender equality.

Women’s public status in Chinese society is further undercut by blatant discrimination in workplace and hiring practices that reinforce stereotypes about traditional roles for women and their sexual objectification. For example, there is a 15 per cent cap on female recruits in the police force, due to the perceived high risks and heavy workload of policing. Job advertisements across a range of both state and private sectors regularly request ‘male-only’ applicants. Private firms often advertise for ‘beautiful girls’ or emphasise the physical attributes desired in female candidates. Women between the ages of 25 and 35 are also routinely discriminated against during interviews, under the belief that they will soon marry and bear children. Within the workplace, women are afforded few protections for maternity leave, and a national paid paternity leave does not exist.

At the family level, gender inequality manifests in multiple, overlapping ways. Within the marriage market, men continue to prefer women who are less educated, younger, and earn a lower wage. Women are regularly chastised for being greedy and materialistic, and blamed for the apparent ‘marriage crisis’. Women are still expected to assume primary caretaking roles of the elderly and children, so much so that women have coined the term, ‘widowed parents’, highlighting the unfair burden of responsibility mothers endure in China.

Women who choose to delay or forego marriage are castigated as ‘leftover women’ and women who pursue a doctorate are derogatively labelled, the ‘third gender’.

Equality is the answer

The clear and pervasive socially constructed gender inequalities combined with the lax response to domestic violence and the weak implementation of the law, demonstrates that women’s safety is not a priority in China, nor are women’s rights. Whilst feminist debate and calls for greater gender equality is unlikely to disappear from online spaces, without a robust effort by the state to advocate and build the foundations necessary for supporting women’s rights that challenge male power and privilege, rates of violence against women in China will continue to climb.

Other gender-related articles: Girl Power and Managing Marriage.

The post The dangerous game of gender inequality: domestic violence and the erosion of women’s rights in China appeared first on The China Story.

On a crisp Sunday morning in the Chinese city of Xi’an, matchmaker Wang sets up her wares for the first time since the COVID-19 lockdown was lifted two months ago.

While not expecting many customers, Wang was surprised by the end of the day at how many parents came seeking her matchmaking services. Parents in their fifties and sixties have returned to continue their conversations and complaints about their children’s unwillingness to marry.

The matchmaking corner at Revolution Park is well known to locals. It is held every Wednesday and Sunday and is a site devoted to matching unmarried women and men.

Few parents admit that they actually believe in this method of matchmaking and the success rate is incredibly low. Parents seemingly attend the park because they see it as a way of fulfilling their parental duties, and also possibly because it is an opportunity to voice and discuss their dissatisfactions — about their unmarried children, what they see as the excessive demands of other parents, and what many perceive as a ‘crisis’ of marriage in China.

For the older generation, marriage is still considered the bedrock of Chinese society. But younger people are increasingly deferring marriage and more marriages are ending in divorce, which is a worrying and incomprehensible trend for many of China’s older generation.

Rapid economic and social changes in China have resulted in a particularly pronounced generation gap. The post-80s generation have far greater choice available to them due to steady economic growth and a growing consumer culture. This has influenced how young people define marriage and what they are looking for in a partner.

Matchmaking at Revolution Park

The matchmaking corner is always humming with activity and energy. Scores of parents in their fifties and sixties can be heard chanting the same questions, “son or daughter?”, “what year?”, “how tall?”.

The key feature of the matchmaking corner is the thousands of posters that are strung up between tree trunks, stapled to bushes, and stuck on tree branches. These posters are either written by a matchmaker or a parent and contain the personal details of an unmarried woman or man.

Prerequisites listed in the posters generally emphasise specific criteria such as minimum height, income, and education, to the exclusion of all those who do not qualify. Upon inspecting the posters, parents regularly chide each other for their ‘excessive’ demands in a daughter or son-in-law. By emphasising the irrational and unfair demands of some, parents are able to deflect responsibility away from their child’s perceived shortcomings to the marriage market as a whole.

There is also a sense of distrust on the part of attendees towards the information about the singles in the posters. Many are wary of false claims over age or even marital status. Visitors to the park decried the tactics of parents who try to disguise the stigma of divorce by describing their child’s marital status as ‘briefly married’, instead of ‘divorced’.

Publicly performing virtuous parenthood

The matchmaking corner is a place of public performance of ‘good parenting’ and is an extension of the dedication parents have exhibited throughout their child’s life. Mr Ye has been attending the matchmaking corner for years, searching for a wife for his 45-year-old son. During this time, he has found a few possible matches, but says his son is never satisfied. Despite this, he considers it is his duty as a parent to take on this matter and he was committed until the situation had been resolved.

I heard comments like this from parents every time I visited the matchmaking corner. At matchmaker tables, parents enjoyed telling others how important their role was in ‘helping’ their child find a suitable partner and how much their children appreciated their assistance. Indeed, this rhetoric of noble parental duty was regularly invoked by parents to justify their visits to the park.

Collectively raging against modern times

Women are often blamed for the marriage ‘crisis’, scapegoated for what many see as their excessive expectations of a future husband. This is a topic of conversation that unites many parents who frequent the corner. During one visit, I was privy to one such debate. The mother of an unmarried 32-year-old man, lead the discussion, drawing a small crowd. As it grew in numbers, her tone of voice changed, her mannerisms grew more exaggerated, and her language more evocative. The people huddled around us also became increasingly animated, nodding their heads furiously and shouting in agreement.

A seat at a matchmaker’s table is another chance to vent the sense of precarity gripping many parents. One afternoon, as I sat with matchmaker Wang, a woman stopped by her table to discuss her son, a recently-divorced taxi driver aged 33. He had been married for only two years and was childless. The sadness she felt about her son’s situation was visceral, but even more so the fury directed at her former daughter-in-law. The likelihood of her divorced son remarrying was at the forefront of the conversation, yet there was little reassurance Wang could provide. We all knew that, for a divorcee, re-marriage would be tough. This woman was not seeking reassurance — instead it seemed the sole purpose of the conversation was to seek comfort for and to vent rage at the dissolution of her son’s marriage.

The matchmaking corner is an opportunity to vent these frustrations with other like-minded individuals, ultimately offering parents a degree of consolation. In this way, the matchmaking corner is a manifestation of a public outpouring of emotion in reaction to the rapid changes occurring in contemporary Chinese society.

The emotional release that matchmaking corners provide helps soothe the gaping contradiction in the parents’ hierarchies of social acceptability. Indeed, as an outlet for the emotional needs of parents, and also a collective debate, the matchmaking corner is a place for the older generation to manage the social and psychological contradictions that confront many parents in China today.

A longer version of this article was published with Melbourne Asia Review at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.

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