Do girls have to like makeup and boys have to like sports? The latest trending topic on Weibo came as a reaction to the Ministry of Education’s announcement to put forward the “Proposal on Preventing the Feminization of Male Youth”.

On their website the Ministry of Education says that it intends to prevent feminine male youth by strengthening physical education teachers in top-level design of the school sports system, in-depth health education, and supporting the research on related issues to better solve this problem. In short, it intends on enforcing schools to place more emphasis on physical education so that male students can become more “masculine”.

The announcement quickly sparked discussion on Weibo from both sides. Some have praised the decision saying that “now boys are less like boys” while others say that it’s emphasizing stereotypical gender expectations.

The Ministry of Education first made the announcement on Dec 8 of last year and says that its first step is to increase the allocation of PE teachers. The “Management Measures for Part-time Sports and Aesthetic Education Teachers” was issued to encourage retired athletes and volunteers with sports expertise to serve as PE teachers, and comprehensively improve the ability and quality of part-time teachers. In the past five years, approximately 20,000 new physical education teachers have been added each year and more than 10,000 people have been trained through the “National Training Program” and “Provincial Training Program”.

Share your thoughts on the subject in the comment section below.

KEEP READING: Pink for Boys, Blue for Girls: You Are (Not) What You Wear 

Images: Pexels

The Annual Women’s Economy Summit is upon us and is the largest gathering of women trailblazers, inspirational leaders, badass entrepreneurs, contributors, and policymakers in town. With a mission to raise awareness of the key role women play in global economic development, the summit is all about highlighting the importance of women leaders and entrepreneurs by encouraging them to collaborate with leading women’s organizations and corporations, keen to share cutting-edge pearls of wisdom.

It all began in 2017 when the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in China and SCHSAsia joined hands and efforts to design an event that would be a bold experience packed with personal and professional development tools for powerful women of today and tomorrow. The 2018 summit attracted over 300 professional men and women and was the birthplace of the first edition of the Women’s Leadership in the Workplace White Paper; a guide for the community to further foster dialogue and programs regarding professional women’s positions within organizations.

We’ve caught up with Su Cheng Harris-Simpson, SCHSAsia CEO and Board of Governor of AmCham China about the big idea behind the initiative.

Su Cheng Harris-Simpson

Beijingkids: Tell us more about the Women’s Economy Summit and the inspiration behind it.
Su Cheng (SC): We started the AmCham Women’s Professional Committee about 12 years ago because we needed a sustainable model and that AmCham can help put up a platform for international and local women working for multinational corporations. About 5 years ago, I encountered so many women groups doing amazing things but I became curious as I didn’t see cohesion among these groups. Besides that, I had encountered complex issues on major gaps in work, especially in leadership and pay. So I thought to start the Women’s Economy Summit to offer everyone a platform to address major areas in women’s economy, and to push the agenda forward.

BJK: What shall we expect in next week’s summit?
SC: This year’s summit is the third edition and we are bringing together many amazing governmental, non-profit groups, leaders and Intrapreneurs/entrepreneurs in one venue. And I’d like to highlight three main emphases of the Women’s Economy Summit: (1) advocacies where we focus on best practices that result in big and lasting change and impact; (2) leadership, where we bring women leaders and women in power and position to serve as role models for others to increase pipeline to grow future women leaders; and (3) Intrapreneurs/entrepreneurship, where we bring nimble and able people who think outside of the box and act as change agents and facilitators of progress to grow both public and private economies.

BJK: Have you seen major changes in the five years since you started the summit?
SC: Yes! There is qualitative and quantifiable progress. In terms of qualitative progress, we’ve seen the discussion move forward and bring awareness. Not only that, but we’ve seen men are also active in the conversation! In terms of quantifiable progress, more systematic support needs to be done on the topic of the pay gap and leadership roles. In China, we have gotten lots of data, but the question is which one is real and usable. So we are still working to find out the baseline of data to identify key gaps to be able to help continue to raise awareness, develop actionable steps and ultimately move the needle forward for impactful change.

BJK: What can you say about the business environment in China? Is it welcoming towards women entrepreneurs?
SC: The good news is in China, there are no barriers to opening a business, but the challenge is to how to grow your business to make it more sustainable and scalable. Both public and private sectors should embrace the 50 percent of the population — women — because there is an “untapped” area or potential for growth. Outside of China, different governments have best practices supporting the growth and sustainability of business by women entrepreneurs. Helping to grow a woman-owned business ultimately grows our economy. This is something that China can do.

BJK: Can men also join the summit?
SC: Of course! We want men to join the summit. A part of our program includes inviting male leaders from multinational corporations, or what we call “Men Champions,” and they will discuss their personal and companies’ efforts to support equality in their workplaces. Also, we would like men to join in the conversation because it will allow everyone to understand and support each other as human beings, and that equality is not about taking away a piece of the pie but enlarging that pie for all to win.

BJK: What’s next for the Women’s Economy Summit?
SC: Until the playing field becomes even, we will still call it the Women’s Economy Summit. We need to do this until we don’t need to bring up the topics of gender and equality in leadership roles, pay gap, and business anymore. We need to continually discuss equality because we need to embrace “differentness” and inclusivity to take full advantage of the talents of men and women all together, and not to label the “differentness” as something positive or negative. We aim to get everybody aware of their own unconscious biases and that they look to someone as a human being like anyone else, and that we need to make people feel they belong and are valued for who they are. Only by achieving that, I believe, will move us forward towards sustainability, growth, and equality for ALL.

Women’s Economy Summit, Apr 10
This year’s summit will feature a full day of keynote speeches, panel discussions, interactive workshops, and networking opportunities. The summit will also aim to examine international, regional, and national “best practices” towards producing steps that companies and organizations can take in order to create a safe, equal, and inspiring working environment, where professional women can flourish and “unleash the power of the economy.”

Attendees have the following to look forward to:
– Career planning and development
– Ideas to step-up your influence and networks
– Women’s health and its cascading impact
– Strengthen interpersonal skills
– Managing stress
– How to understand and identify unconscious gender bias

Adults. RMB 1,800 (Early bird ticket – buy one get one free), RMB 1,800 (Regular all-day ticket). 9am–7pm. Beijing Marriott Hotel Northeast, 26A Xiaoyun Road, Chaoyang District. (yliang@amchamchina.org)

Photos: AmCham China press release via the AmCham China website

Billing itself as the “first Chinese arts festival on gender,” the four-day LookOut Fest certainly has ambitious aims. Be it plays about transgender characters, panel discussions about women, representations of power on and off the stage, lectures about men and the conventions of masculinity, the festival encompasses a wide range of mediums, styles, and topics to dissect modern day gender dynamics.

Slated to take place Jul 6, 7, 8, and 15, the festival is organized by Ibsen International and the China AIDS Walk in collaboration with the Faculty for Dramatology and Applied Theatre Studies of the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. The artsy stage, screen, and video installations that will be showcased position themselves as active showcases for attendees to ease themselves into topics that are too often ignored, shunned, or censored. Meanwhile, Beijingers who themselves feel marginalized because of their gender are invited to enjoy the socially conscious works in a safe and open space.

Topics dissected during the festival include Chinese subcultures like “diaosi,” or loser culture

Martin Yang is the co-curator of the works at the festival and also known for his work on the All Gender Toilet Program and other groundbreaking endeavors as the project manager at Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, or BGHEI. He tells the Beijinger: “Although it was in the spirit of the pride month when I first had the idea of organizing a festival in Beijing, I gradually gravitated towards a very simple question that matters to me dearly: ‘what life do I want to live in Beijing?'”

The festival will feature stage performances, art installations, and more

Yang adds: “I am drawn to the diversity of human cultures and I wish to explore possibilities of life with people who have unique perspectives and life experiences. Art is a magic medium will probably create a folding space in Beijing to let people who usually won’t meet cross paths and have a conversation on something seems so common – gender. Gender diversity is only a small portion of the whole diversity universe, but it’s a very attractive star and it keeps nudging us to look at it over and over again.”

When asked how the plays, art installations, and other works at LookOut might affect attendees, Yang says: “People might have a soul-level shock, become more understanding of some aspects of gender, expand or narrow one’s own universe, or get nothing at all when out of it and walk out of the festival. But isn’t that the beauty of life?”

He adds that the fest’s program will be unique because he and his cohorts endeavored to make LookOut as inclusive and creative as possible. The roster is made up of both established and emerging artists, locals and foreigners, and “we also have community-based art groups partaking that represent voices of women, migrant workers, people with disabilities, and queers.”

LookOut will take place Jul 6, 7, 8, and 15. For more information about the full festival schedule, descriptions of the featured works, and how to buy passes, click here.

More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
Instagram: mullin.kyle

Photos: usedwigs.com, courtesy of LookOut

We probably don’t need to tell you that traditionally in the Chinese household men are often placed before women in the social hierarchy. Age-old beliefs still create pressure on families to produce a boy so the family name will carry on. While great strides in some areas have been made, particularly in working and taking on greater roles in professional and public life, true gender equality is still an area that requires some examination so that real progress can be made.

This event sponsored by the Beijing International Society is being held on March 9 (7.30pm) at the Embassy of Romania, and will be going over the history of China’s journey towards gender equity. In China, almost all aspects of modern life are moving pretty fast, and areas such as gender equality, though still deeply rooted in Confucian philosophies that are thousands of years old, are no exception.

Hear veteran women’s rights advocate Wu Qing, gender scholar Can Yi Ping, and moderator Hong Huang as they share on a variety of topics related to the history, economics, and future of women’s rights in China.

More than ever women’s rights issues regarding gender gaps in today’s society are taking the spotlight. As parents, we should be informing ourselves on ways to construct a household that breaks from patriarchy norms, and not just perpetuating the environments we maybe grew up in. The world is changing, and not only do we want our children to be knowledgeable about these changes, but also a force in making these changes happen when their time comes.

BIS events are open to foreign passport holders only and photography, filming and recording are not permitted.
Non-members are welcome for a single lecture fee of RMB 60, while students with valid ID are allowed entrance for RMB 30. Go here for more info in the event.

Photo: zhendegender.com

Beijing is not short of charities that we can support. One charity which is not located in Beijing, but has a huge support network here, came to my attention when one of my expat friends told me about it. “Days for Girls” provides girls with sustainable sanitary products. My friend would sew them herself, and went on a volunteer trip to give them to girls in need. The stories that she told me were truly heartbreaking, and heartwarming at the same time.

During my time in Beijing, I have met more inspiring women who volunteer for “Days for Girls”; they spend their time caring for these girls with very simple needs. Several clothes auctions have donated their proceeds to this cause.

“Every girl and woman with ready access to feminine hygiene, by 2022. Days for Girls is dedicated to creating a more free, dignified, and educated world, through providing lasting access to feminine hygiene solutions and health education. Thus far, Days for Girls has reached over 800,000 women and girls. We can reach them all, with your help”

I remember my first period vividly, I was 12 years old and it was summer. I was at the public pool, ready to change into my bathing suit when I saw something red in my underwear. I and my friend had to return home, without jumping in the pool. I had half a toilet roll stuffed in my underpants while biking through our neighborhood. Back home my mother was gardening, and when I told her she congratulated me. I was confused. I am bleeding and you congratulate me?

From then I started to have monthly cramps; they were unbearable. I bled so much, even my mother was confused that I used so many sanitary pads. My back pains and cramps were so horrible, I would stay home from school. Every month I would vomit from pain, and on one occasion I fainted in my friend’s bathroom. I was brought to the doctor and put on birth control to ease my pain and my unstoppable bleeding. I was only 12 years old, not even in high school, not even close to being an adult.

There are girls in this world that have no sanitary pads. They have to sit on a cardboard box till their bleeding stops. They have to pause their lives every month. “Celeste Mergens founded Days for Girls at a time when virtually no other organizations were speaking about the global need for menstrual hygiene management solutions.” Days for Girls’ website brings a tear and a smile to my face. All these volunteers making and distributing reusable sanitary kits for girls around the world. For more information visit their website, and be ready to be amazed. www.daysforgirls.org

“Every girl and woman has inherent worth and dignity. Days for Girls celebrates this by providing sustainable feminine hygiene solutions and health education. When girls and women have health, education, and opportunity, communities and our world are stronger.”

Photos: www.daysforgirls.org

Questions involving gender assignment have been asked for decades, and continue to spark a mass of controversial debates across all sectors of society. Today’s millennials seem more willing to understand each other’s differences, especially those involving sexual orientation, gender assignment, gender roles and homosexuality. Two students associated with the Beijing LGBT Center share their own insights on the subject.

“Don’t worry, this one will be a girl,” the shopkeeper tells me after having seen my bump and learned that our first child is a boy. Walking down the street, passing one fruit vendor after the next – all of them ready to pack up their stall in seconds in the event the Chengguan (城管) will visit – buying strawberries at the first, pineapples at the next, honey melons at the last place, they all tell me the same thing: the next will be a girl.

During my first pregnancy, my mother-in-law asks which sex we want our baby to have. We tell her we’re fine with whatever sex and that we couldn’t possibly change the sex even if we wanted. We can’t, and we don’t want to change it. That is the end of the discussion. Gender-selective abortions are so widespread during the (recently abolished) one-child-policy that her question is merely a reflection of what so often happens when people find they’ll be having a girl rather than a boy.

The perfect family

Even though many families wish for a boy, a family with one set of parents, a son, and a daughter is considered to be the perfect family in China. Ideally, the son will be older than the daughter. During my first pregnancy, strangers on the street – quite a few of them elderly women wearing outdoor pajamas with flower patterns who were on their way to the evening’s square dancing – tell me I’d be having a son, almost as though to appease me. This time around, no one tells me I’ll be having a boy.

One cold winter day during the first trimester of my second pregnancy, my husband, son, and I are at my in-laws’ well-heated apartment in Northeast China. We sit down for dinner at the small fold-up table my in-laws always put up in the entrance area of their tiny apartment. My husband jokingly asks his parents: “Who wants to bet on the sex of the baby?” My father-in-law reacts, annoyed: “Oh come on, not another bet, the baby will have the gender it’s supposed to have.”

A few months later, I’m at the local hospital for an ultrasound. The physician, a woman in her 50s wearing the ubiquitous white coat, is in no hurry to end the ultrasound. She slowly moves the transducer probe across my belly, applying more gel whenever necessary. “The heartbeat’s a little fast,” she remarks. “Faster than it’s supposed to be?” I ask, alarmed. “No, just a little fast.” She goes on: “I’d really love to tell you the sex of your baby, but the baby doesn’t show us.” A little later, she goes on: “This one looks a lot like you. Look at the sharp-pointed nose.” She turns the screen showing my baby’s face towards me so I can see. “Aren’t girls supposed to look more like their father?” she says to her young male assistant between gritted teeth, just loud enough for me to hear. Although gender determination is technically illegal in China, there are ways to let a doctor tell you, and many people discover the sex of their child long before birth.

For another ultrasound, my ob-gyn in Austria confirms that the baby will most probably be a girl. My husband tells me: “My mum already knew. She knew it will be a girl when she looked at the heart-rate.”

We’ve created the perfect family

I’ll never know if my in-laws would have wished for a grandson to carry on the family name if our firstborn had been a girl rather than a boy. I do know, however, that they accepted our decision to keep the baby no matter the sex.

For our two-year-old son, it was clear from the beginning that he would be having a sister. “Is the baby in mum’s belly a boy or a girl?” “A girl,” he’d say unhesitatingly. “Do you want a sister or a brother?” “A sister,” he’ll tell everyone who asks. He even chose a name for his sister: Mina.

… or have we?

At 38 weeks of my pregnancy, I go to the hospital in Austria to do another pregnancy check-up. I can directly look at the screen while the doctor performs the ultrasound. “This is the baby’s heart. This is the digestive system. And that’s the placenta.” He searches around for a little while. “And these are the testicles.” He prints out a photo of the testicles as shown on the ultrasound to take home with me. Great. I don’t have a nice picture of the face of our baby on the ultrasound, like most would get in Austria, but I do have an ultrasound picture of our baby’s testicles. It’s certainly a picture to remember and hand around and show relatives, and our son once he’s older: “And these are your testicles from when before you where born.”

On this exact day, my husband is on his flight to Austria (to everyone’s relief, he did get that visa just in time for the birth). I send him the message: “I went to the pregnancy check-up. Mina has two testicles.” He receives the message ten hours later while waiting for his suitcase at the airport in Vienna.

We haven’t created the so-called perfect family. But that’s okay. Women are not robots who produce a boy or a girl at the push of a button. I know that I would have been a great mother to a girl, but I don’t believe in a perfect family. I do believe in teaching boys about equality and respect, just as much as you would teach girls, about showing them they are loved, and that they are perfect the way they are, no matter their sex.

Photos courtesy of Ruth Silbermayr-Song

Ruth Silbermayr-Song is an Austrian illustrator, German teacher and mother of a 2-year-old. She writes about life in China as a foreign woman, her cross-cultural marriage, and child rearing bridging cultures and languages on her blog China Elevator Stories. Her story of being pregnant and raising her son in China will appear in the anthology “Knocked Up Abroad Again – Baby bumps, twists and turns around the globe”.

Countless studies have been conducted to discern which is truly the stronger sex in the human race. Our differences, parsed into an endless array of categories by “discerning” scientists have been examined under innumerable tests so that the scientists (most likely men) could determine the champion of the battle of the sexes.

“In this corner, brawn, height, and a stubborn inability to ask for directions.”

“And in the opposing corner…” well, where to start?

Let me break it down with a bit of simple, old-fashioned observation. Like many a home, ours has little people in it called children. These little people bring men and women alike great pain and suffering in life, but also great joy. That is why we keep them. Alas, they also bring numerous diseases home with them – primarily from places these little ones congregate, such as schools, playgrounds, and the Gap.

This past December, our youngest managed to get a cold and decided, as one does, to share it with the family. One by one, everyone in the household succumbed to the cold, even the ayis. After a week or so, everyone recovered from the illness; everyone, except me. For three weeks I was stricken with the head cold from hell – earaches, sinus infections, and eventually even a slight fever. I went through enough tissue boxes to take down a Douglas Fir tree and I am still not entirely well.

My point is, the women recovered quite quickly and with little drop in productivity, while I lost at least two weeks of work and I doubt my brain is fully functional yet. I could claim some mysterious illness, but the Doc declared it a simple case of sinusitis.

Am I the tallest? Yes. But I’m definitely not the strongest.

Photo:ManOnPHI (flickr)