AU professor speaks about feminism in China

While the topics of #MeToo and the long-awaited crack down on sexual assault are finally coming into everyday conversation, these topics have always been at the interest of Interim Director of Women’s Studies Dr. Arianne Gaetano.

Joining Auburn’s feminist movement that began in the mid-80s in the homes of feminist-minded faculty, Gaetano brings optimism and enlightenment to our issues women face at home and abroad.

Gaetano first found her love for feminism and anthropology as an undergraduate abroad at Duke University. While abroad, Gaetano was introduced first hand to China in the 1980s that was still very much under socialism and was just at the beginning of transitioning to capitalist market reforms. This trip would prove to be formative in the rest of Gaetano’s passion for people as she pushed for Duke University to develop a Women’s Studies program and intend to teach English at a university in China. However, this never came to fruition in light of the Tiananmen Massacre and the consequential travel ban. Her path instead led her to work towards a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Southern California instead.

While abroad in China, Gaetano sought to obtain qualitative data through interviewing women from a variety of backgrounds.

“I interviewed women workers about gender equality and they would always repeat the standard line of Chairman Mao: ‘men and women are equal’ because that is the Communist ideology. They learned it and would repeat verbatim without really asking, ‘is it really true?’” said Gaetano. “On the surface, there was incredible progress because men’s occupations were wide open and women were filling them. You had female welders and female bus drivers; occupations that had not been women’s jobs. But as you dive a little deeper you find they are still responsible for raising kids, putting dinner on the table, and they aren’t treated equally necessarily in social interactions or even in pay”.

Not only did Gaetano get to learn what life was like an Urban educated woman in China but also gained inspiration to focus on what life is like for those of ‘rural’ background in Chinese society. This when she struck upon her research topic for her dissertation for her Ph.D. She became fascinated with the details of how rural women were coming to the cities in China and what their lives were like.

Her findings are fascinating and distant to the world of an Auburn student. For example, rural men have the hardest time marrying because they are the ‘least desired’. Yet, women in rural areas have an easier time finding rural men because of negativity towards what is deemed an ‘Urban’ woman.

“Men look at these urban women as over-educated, too independent, and too demanding,” said Gaetano. “There is reverse prejudice against very highly educated urban women and those who are in high ranking positions or high income earning jobs”

Gaetano also found that attitudes towards women began to change again with the introduction of China’s former one-child policy. This policy was particularly strict in cities, so in response, campaigns were introduced to make certain that female children were just as valued as males. The communist policies of seeing men and women as equals reappeared and allowed for parents to pour in just as many resources and opportunities into their female child as a male child would receive.

“There was this phenomenon of really educating your child and if your child is a daughter, so be it. Convince her to do well in schools and have the best in life, but it becomes a Catch-22 for these women because suddenly their years of study and laboring through the glass ceiling to achieve status in the workforce and education, their parents ask “where is our grandchild, we want one!’” said Gaetano.

Highly educated single women in the cities have found an outlet for their frustration through feminist causes such as the ones we use here in the United States such as the #MeToo movement. It is difficult for women in China to get around the censors put in place; simply adding #MeToo sets off the censor so women have gotten creative. Now they use the emoji for a bowl of rice and a for a rabbit which, in Chinese, translates to the same meaning as #MeToo. The censors do not pick up emoji’s, so this growing trend has been a success.