Chinese women seek to break out of traditional roles

The conversations of small groups break the night’s calm in Wudaoying, one of the most popular hutong (alleyways) in Beijing’s old quarter. At the door of a concert hall, Shao, 27, and Qin, 28, chat with beers in their hands. “They treat me like a little girl and on top of that I have to smile so as not to cause trouble,” Shao complains. She takes a drag from her cigarette and nods toward a co‑worker standing a few meters away. “I’m sick of so much mansplaining,” Qin replies, referring to the condescending explanations by men who assume women know less.

Shao and Qin (who, like other interviewees, prefer not to give their full names) speak openly about women’s circumstances in China. They value their financial independence and the fact that they went to university. “Unlike our grandmothers,” Shao emphasizes. But they say their generation also faces major challenges. “My father wanted me to be a boy and he made that clear throughout my childhood,” Qin says. She was born under the one‑child policy, devised in the late 1970s to limit population growth and replaced in 2016 by a policy allowing two children. Since 2021, authorities have promoted three. The restrictions over three and a half decades—marked by abortions, forced sterilizations and abandonments—worsened the gender imbalance alongside a traditional preference for sons.

Now that China’s population has fallen for four consecutive years and the People’s Republic has recorded its lowest birth rate in history, Beijing wants more births. In 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the All‑China Women’s Federation to “guide” women “to play a unique role in promoting traditional virtues and establishing good family customs.” “I don’t want children. Much less so if I’m being pressured into it,” Qin says in a lower voice. “Any policy related to women is never for our benefit but for the national interest,” she stresses.

Talking about feminism in China is not banned per se, but independent activism linked to women’s rights operates in an increasingly narrow space. In that context, communities have sprung up in big cities where women share experiences, find mutual support and question what society expects of them. Shao demands tools to make choices about her life: “At university we’re not taught to develop critical thinking, nor is feminism discussed. We have to educate ourselves.” “In China, women are flowers in a garden where we cannot bloom,” she adds.

“Like half the world’s population, we should be present in more places,” argues Lilith, 34, owner of Half the Sky, a bookstore specializing in women’s issues located in a residential neighborhood in east Beijing. Her shop’s name recalls the Maoist slogan that “women hold up half the sky,” which promoted women’s access to the workplace. Lilith honors the generations that opened that path to emancipation. Thanks to them, she says, today’s women can debate persistent inequalities—from workplace barriers to beauty standards—and demand autonomy over their own bodies.

“We always have to prove ourselves much more”

She says that if she were a man, her family would have supported her move to the capital to start a business: “We always have to prove ourselves much more.” In addition to selling books and her own design products, she serves coffee and cocktails, like the Wu Zetian, named for the only woman to rule China as emperor. She also runs a women‑only reading club, film screenings and courses. The shop’s walls are covered with photographs and messages from its community. She encourages attendees to speak freely but asks them to avoid political topics, aware of the risks involved in discussing them.

Authorities have focused on what they call “extreme feminism.” In 2025 and 2026, the Cyberspace Administration, the regulator responsible for digital censorship, launched month‑long campaigns coinciding with the Lunar New Year against content that encouraged rejection of marriage and motherhood or fomented confrontation between men and women. Amnesty International documented in its 2025 report the shutdown of feminist accounts that addressed sexual harassment and discrimination. Human Rights Watch, for its part, warns of growing government hostility toward feminism, while noting that gender debates are generally tolerated so long as they do not directly challenge the Communist Party.

Last month, the Beijing Institute of Technology fired law professor Pei Yi, citing “serious violations of professional ethics.” Pei had been accused of promoting “radical feminism” after a message in the course group for Protection of Women’s Rights in the Digital Era in which she warned it “could cause discomfort” and suggested canceling the class for students who had enrolled only for the credits. Her words were interpreted as an indirect slight against men, and a clip circulated online in which the teacher asked why none of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee (the party’s top leadership) could be women.

In this climate, the word feminism raises reservations even among some women who advance its goals. Zhang Li, vice dean of the School of Humanities at Beijing Normal University and a scholar of women’s literature, prefers to speak of a “gender perspective,” an approach she promotes and which, she says, “is increasingly of interest to students.” She has noticed a change in recent years: “Now female students dare to share experiences or viewpoints that were not heard before, and many boys want to understand us.” Still, Dr. Zhang avoids identifying as a feminist because she considers the term “combative” and geared toward “confrontation.”

Moxu, 32, also rejects the label, although her cocktail bar, Libertango, is among Beijing’s best‑known spots described as “welcoming to women.” “It happened naturally; women feel comfortable and safe here to relax and socialize, but our doors are open to everyone,” Moxu says. Each week she runs “mutual praise” meetups where participants pair up for three minutes to highlight positive aspects of the other before switching partners. The idea began in the vintage store she used to run: many women expressed insecurity when trying on clothes and rejected compliments. “I decided to adapt the speed‑dating concept to a space where women could praise each other.” “I don’t know much about feminism. For me, what matters is that people treat each other with respect and equality,” she says.

“When beauty becomes an obligation, the mirror turns into an instrument of torture,” reads a mirror that adorns Xin Chao Book House in Shanghai. The shop sells works written exclusively by women and postcards in nüshu (the only writing system in the world created and used exclusively by women, to denounce the patriarchal system). Lele, an employee, says the bestsellers are South Korean authors and the British writer Virginia Woolf.

The bookstore organizes a workshop born from the desire to preserve female experiences that rarely get recorded. “If we don’t write them ourselves, those stories will end up forgotten,” says Wei Yi, one of the organizers. Participants range from recent graduates to retirees, with professions from journalism to artificial intelligence. Wei recalls emotionally when a participant recounted an episode of domestic violence. “It was so much like something I had lived through. We hugged. Another attendee patted us and told us we were ‘good girls,’” she remembers. Afterwards, those present kept talking and hugging. “I was surrounded by many kind, intelligent and very strong women. No one wanted to leave,” she recalls.

Writing offers women another avenue for expression and gathering in several Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan, according to posts on social media. Wang Dahua has promoted Her Page, a project that compiles women’s autobiographical accounts into collective books and organizes meetups. Several dozen women attended one in Beijing in early October that this newspaper attended. They shared the challenges of single motherhood, unhappy relationships and career changes that clash with parents’ expectations. They also talked about doubts about marriage upon reaching their 30s and the difficulty of finding time for themselves.

“What we call the norm is the path your parents followed in their time and which they consider correct; the path they did not follow unsettles them. But times have changed,” one woman said. Another attendee thanked the group for the chance to speak: “I’m very happy I was able to take this microphone today. When you have the opportunity, don’t waste it. It took me 50 years of my life to understand it.”

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