In China, the LGBTQ+ community face severe discrimination. Many LGBTQ+ people's families and communities refuse to accept their sexuality or gender identity, and therefore find themselves in compromising situations like 'fake' marriages to fulfil their filial duty. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder until 2001, and some private Chinese clinics still offer 'electroshock' gay conversion therapy. [...]
Tag: Equality
Words and Women: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In the face of the proposition that feminism has become too mainstream, that feminist activism has become an empty marketing tool, Adichie responds: This idea of feminism as a party to which only a select few people get to come: this is why so many women, particularly women of colour, feel alienated from mainstream western academic [...]
China’s International Women’s Day in Pictures
A quick rundown of how International Women's Day looked from the perspective of women in China - in pictures. Chinese news outlet Global Times provided a timely reminder of International Men's Day | image from: twitter Global Times, a daily newspaper owned and published by the state-affiliated People's Daily, decided International Women's Day (known as [...]
Words and Women: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 24th and incumbent President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa's first elected female head of state in 2005, and was re-elected in 2011. In June 2016, [...]
Sexuality, Contraception and Challenging the Patriarchy: Lijia Zhang on her debut novel Lotus (Interview: part 2)
Inspired by her grandmother’s deathbed confession of being sold to a brothel, Lijia Zhang injects her cutting social criticism into her first novel, Lotus. The book delves deep into the sex industry in contemporary Shenzhen, following a young migrant woman, Lotus, who is eager to escape her life as a prostitute.
I say ‘gender equality’; you say ‘women in power!’
There are a bunch of ways to measure gender equality. While some believe that giving women the right to vote solved that problem long ago, women are still a long way from equal representation in politics. Why's equal representation important? Women politicians are far more likely to hold women's best interests at heart. Without women's participation in [...]
Protesting on International Women’s Day? History is on Your Side
International Women's Day began as a day of women's protest in Europe and the United States. Celebrating this socialist holiday largely died out in the US, while communists in China have been commemorating Women's Day annually since 1922. The tables have turned this year. Women in the US are striking today, while working women in China are enjoying a half-day off work.
Words and Women: Vera Nazarian
A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human. ― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration Words and Women is a regular feature that spotlights short quotations from influential women activists, [...]
Emma Watson’s Vanity Fair Photo is Exactly What Feminists are Fighting For
British actor and pioneer of the UN’s HeForShe campaign, Emma Watson has faced criticism for the publication of a photo in which her breasts are partially exposed. The image is one of a series taken by acclaimed fashion photographer Tim Walker, with styling by Jessica Diehl. It accompanied Watson’s recent cover story interview for Vanity [...]
Suffrage
We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half. Emmeline Pankhurst I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears. Emmeline Pankhurst Read on '1908-1917 Imprisoned suffragettes', mashable
Zhēn de Gender 