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With Loosened Bound Feet, Chinese Women Leap into New Century
Eighty-eight-year-old Yang Shulin, with a pair of bound feet, has never walked out of the village where she has lived since getting married 68 years ago.
Although the village is only a one-hour ride away from the urban area of Beijing, Yang, the oldest woman in the village can visit Tian'anmen Square or the Palace Museum only in her dreams.
Actually, the anguish of bound feet had lasted for nearly one thousand years for Chinese women until Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of China's democratic revolution, outlawed bound feet and advocated natural feet at the beginning of this century.
Before entering the new century, the last manufacturer of shoes for bound feet in China had stopped production for lack of market demand.
When two close-up photos, one of a woman's distorted feet after many years of binding and the other of a Chinese women football player shooting at the goal at the Third Women's World Cup, were put together in the meeting hall of the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the viewers shared the opinion that a tremendous change has taken place in China.
After New China was founded in 1949, Chinese women, protected by the constitution, came out of their family life and went to work in all walks of life. They enjoy equal pay for equal work with men. The late Chinese Leader Mao Zedong had a famous saying, "Women can hold up half of the sky".
The fact that "half of the sky" in China were granted the right to equality with men was, 50 years later, included by media in western countries in the list of the most important events to influence the world during the 20th century.
Currently, there are over 340 million women employed in China, accounting for 48.7 percent of China's total employment, 14 percent higher than the world average.
Over one third of Chinese government functionaries are female, and more than one fifth of deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's supreme power organ, are women.
"Equality between women and men, a state policy in China to promote social development, has never been so deeply rooted in the heart of the Chinese people as it is now," said Peng Peiyun, vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and president of the All-China Women's Federation.
Li Yinhe, an expert on women studies from the Chinese Academy of Social sciences, said that in the past, Chinese women shouldered responsibility for all the housework but had no say in family decisions. However, a recent survey showed that in 46 percent of Chinese families, the husband and wife share the housework, Li said.
At the same time, husbands and wives in 80 percent of Chinese families discuss and make joint decisions on family investment, loans and other major issues, according to the survey.
Joining the workforce was the first step towards Chinese women's liberation, while receiving education became the key step to deciding their own fate.
Half a century ago, 90 percent of Chinese women were illiterate, while nowadays 99 percent of school age Chinese girls are enrolled.
At the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the top research organizations in China, there are 70 women academicians, six percent of the total.
The campaign against bound feet initiated by Sun Yat-sen one century ago set free Chinese women from binding cloth. However, China needs a new campaign to set women free from conservative concepts in the new century and let them enjoy complete equality with men, said Li Huiying, another expert on women studies.
No longer restricted by bound feet, Chinese women will step into the new century and stride ahead at a faster rate than ever before with self-confidence and self-dependence, Li said.
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