Modern Chinese women enjoy unprecedented life expectancy, education levels and living standards. Despite this, many barriers remain to achieving true gender equality, especially in the countryside. Ancient customs of the Dai people of Yunnan point the way forward for narrowing the gender gap not only in China but in the global countryside.

An unrelenting march forward

Across the globe, women are subjected to the slings and arrows of unfavourable political, economic and societal structures that produce better outcomes for men. Progress has been made, though.

The global women’s rights movement has achieved remarkable milestones since its inception. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 built strong support among abolitionists to lobby for women’s rights. The text of their Convention modified the well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence — ‘all men and women are created equal’ — unequivocally asserting that the fundamental dignity of women had been overlooked for too long.

In 1894, women activists in South Australia led the charge for both legislating women’s suffrage and candidate eligibility. Seven years later, when the separate colonies of Australia were negotiating for the federation of the continent into one commonwealth, guaranteeing nation-wide women’s suffrage and candidate eligibility for women were pre-conditions for South Australia’s ratification.

International Women’s Day was marked for the first time in 1911, celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Rallies were held around the world pushing for equal access to education, public office, vocational opportunities and the right to vote. A flurry of nations ratified women’s suffrage around this time, spreading from Scandinavia across the rest of Europe and North America.

These accomplishments culminated with Iceland electing the first female Head of State in 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

2021: a banner year for progress

In more recent history, 2021 saw a bevy of achievements for women’s rights.

We saw eight countries swear in their first female head of state, Kamala Harris became the first Black and first South Asian vice-president of the United States and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala became the first woman and first African to serve as director-general of the World Trade Organisation. Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz appointed an equal number of men and women to ministerial positions in the cabinet, on the heels of Angela Merkel’s legacy serving as the de facto leader of the European Union. A series of laws were introduced: strengthened anti-rape laws in Spain, same-sex marriage laws in Switzerland and Chile, prohibitions on child marriages in Lebanon and others have ushered in more just governance around the world.

We saw women leading the battle on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19, comprising 70 percent of workers in healthcare and heroically saving lives at great personal cost. The massive vaccine rollout of 2021 could not have occurred were it not for the invaluable research of brilliant women scientists like Katalin Karikó, Kizzmekia Corbett and Özlem Türeci. New guidelines were issued for Nasdaq-listed companies, requiring 3000 companies to have at least one woman on their board of directors, helping to establish diversity standards and facilitate the inclusion of different voices in corporate boards.

We also saw Chloé Zhao be the first woman of colour and first woman of Asian descent to win Best Director at the Academy Awards; an Olympic Games featuring the most gender-balanced athletic competitors in history while awarding equal visibility to both male and female categories in primetime; and Afghan women in the streets bravely speaking out against the despotic misogyny of the Taliban regime.

The immense challenges of 2021 cannot be understated. And yet, women rose time and time again to overcome them.

Potential roadblocks

Meaningful steps to elevate the status of women are being taken as part of a concerted global effort. But the shuffle forward is still far too slow. Latest figures indicate that at the current rate of progress, it will take nearly 150 years to attain global gender parity in politics alone. This figure was calculated by looking at the total percentage of women occupying seats of parliament (26.1 percent) and global ministers (22.6 percent) worldwide as well as data on female heads of states (81 countries report never having a female head of state). Though the trend is a positive one, it is in urgent need of acceleration.

There are also deep concerns that COVID-19 will undermine decades of progress worldwide. Women suffer most under policies of self-isolation, with increased risk of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. A shrunken global economy has also left households with dwindling economic options, exacerbating the burden on women to balance professional and personal lives, who even before the pandemic took on most of the unpaid labour and caretaker tasks at home. This worsens the time poverty of women, that is, the subjective experience of having too many things to do and not enough time to complete them, which can have devastating healthcare consequences by increasing risks for cardiovascular diseases, higher BMIs and depression.

The women of China

China, called home by 690 million women, 148 million of whom reside in the countryside, guarantees ‘equal rights of men and women in all spheres of life’ in its constitution. Indeed, there is a popular expression in Chinese that ‘women hold up half the sky’.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, policymakers have made great strides in improving the life expectancy and literacy rates of its citizens, profiting both genders. Despite this, the overall rate of progress has been eclipsed by the rest of the world. In particular, women have fallen far behind in leadership positions in private enterprises as well as in political appointments. In 2019, the World Economic Forum’s annual ranking on global gender equality placed China at 106th out of 153 countries, marking the 11th decline in a row.

This has deep implications for China’s rural–urban divide. China’s dense population centres cluster on its eastern seaboard to which the lion’s share of national resources and talent tend to flow. Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou: all the largest, most-prosperous cities that come to mind are found in the eastern area of the country. These wealthy metropolises are the seats of prominent universities, financial institutions, industries and political power. Though women face serious disadvantages in these cities, particularly in terms of accessibility to leadership positions in private enterprises and political appointments, they perform quite well in terms of educational attainment.

Rural realities

This is not so in China’s countryside, where women grapple with a stark gender disparity in education. This disparity can, in large part, be explained as the persistence of misogynistic cultural norms embedded in daily practices and attitudes. Many rural parents do not set high educational expectations for girls compared to boys, expecting them to marry and become in-law caretakers. On average, rural boys on average tend to remain in school for 8.1 years compared to rural girls, who remain in school for 7.3 years. Girls who leave school early face restricted vocational opportunities and are vulnerable to higher rates of teen pregnancy. Conversely, girls who receive a complete education tend to marry older and are more likely to lead healthy and vibrant lives, resulting in healthier societies and better futures.

Another problematic cultural norm is the preference for bearing sons instead of daughters, which has created a lopsided disparity in the gender ratio. Many historic reasons explain this: a son is a more productive labourer on the family’s land, a family’s lineage is traditionally passed down through the male side, and women ‘marry into’ the men’s side of the family, becoming caretakers to their in-laws, and cease contributing to their natal household. Accordingly, in ancient times, sons have traditionally been conceived of as a long-term investment for parents, acting as a sort of pension fund in retirement. In recent times, this kind of outdated thinking lives on and is complicated by modern technology, as ultrasound scans allow parents to identify the gender of the foetus during pregnancy, leading to a higher number of aborted female foetuses. This has led to an imbalanced gender ratio, with 30 million more Chinese men than women.

Chronic female underrepresentation in government is a highly visible case of structural gender inequality. A statistical report indicates that women comprised only 24 percent of all village committees in 2018, generally undertaking women-specific advocacy work and not engaging in the type of executive decision-making their male committee counterparts tend to perform. Examining the rungs of government hierarchy, the numbers become even more stark: women comprise 9.33 percent of county leadership, 5.29 percent of city leadership and 3.23 percent of provincial leadership. Men dominate all power structures. Lack of women in positions of political leadership complicates efforts to mainstream more equitable gender practices and policies and young girls are left without political role models.

Structural gender inequality can also be a shadowy foe. As mentioned earlier, it can cloak itself under the guise of ‘tradition’ in delegating which household members perform which tasks and responsibilities while setting different expectations for boys and girls. It can trap women in the roles of ‘child-bearer’ or ‘caretaker’ and drastically limit their future aspirations and dreams. The social systems by which they are surrounded oftentimes reinforce the narrative that the role of the women in the rural household is to bear children, manage the home and, if there is time left over, perform underpaid, short-term work in agricultural and service sectors. It is not signalled through mainstream institutions to have broader political aspirations, as these are overwhelmingly reserved for men.

What can be done?

For women to have a fair chance in rural locales, parents must change their expectations toward daughters. Girls must be encouraged to receive a full education and consider future opportunities that might go against traditional gender roles. Parents need to communicate to their children that education equips everyone, not just boys, with a toolkit allowing them to seize upon income-generating opportunities. This is also in the interest of older family members in the countryside, many of whom harbour the antiquated expectation for sons to support parents financially in old age. In a village featuring more educated girls with higher income-generating potential, open-minded elder family members could strengthen intergenerational support structures. This is a net win for society as a whole, reducing the family’s dependence on state pensions while enabling men and women to rise and meet the economic challenges of the 21st century. Broad parental involvement can thus help foster a societal ethos that is conducive to narrowing the educational attainment gap, with positive economic implications, but this is an incremental process that must occur over generations.

Certain programs can kickstart the process, like increased access to technical training, extension services and more. Given how common it is for rural Chinese women to leave school early for marriage or migrant labour, this group is particularly vulnerable and in need of enhanced protection. Child marriages, which drastically limit the scope of women’s futures and dreams, have been the target of national campaigns and punishing legislation, but they nonetheless continue to take place in rural towns and villages. In some extreme cases, as the recent case of the chained women in Xuzhou illuminated, the spectre of human trafficking and forced marriages continues to stalk the land, reigniting discussion about what policies can be formulated and enforced to offer more protection to women. Girls should feel safe both at home and in the classroom.

When rural women receive higher rates of educational attainment, many trickle-down secondary effects will be felt by all of society. More women will become visible in positions of power. This is not enough to achieve gender parity, though, as even countries with well-educated citizenries continue to struggle with poor representation of women in government.

Australia, a country with a high standard of education among its women, provides a helpful case study. Affirmative action targets have helped democratize Australia’s government with proven effectiveness: as of 2021, women held 49.6 percent of government board positions. These action targets can ameliorate the situation in China, too, given China’s successful history in carrying out affirmative action policies to reduce ethnic disparities across government departments. Other changes, like improved coverage of social benefits, closing the pay gap, expanded in-office childcare facilities and equalizing the retirement age between men and women can help encourage and streamline China’s rural women into civil servant positions.

In March 2022, at the annual meeting of China’s two top political bodies, a suite of policy changes is on the legislative agenda to combat slowing population growth, such as allowing women who bear children out of wedlock access to the same family planning resources, such as parental leave and subsidies, as those in wedlock. For China, this marks a significant change in political thought and while it is explicitly targeting declining fertility rates, it would facilitate single mothers entering the workforce with fewer financial burdens. Another proposal calls for extending paternity leave, allowing men to shoulder additional responsibilities at home without being penalised while discouraging discrimination against women in the job market. These are but a few measures under deliberation and while specific reforms are yet to be codified in law, broad support for them indicates a positive trend in governmental policymaking.

A change in thinking at home, in programs and in policies operated in concert with local stakeholders, supported by the right institutional frameworks, can greatly bolster the resilience of rural women and bring about successful futures.

The Dai people of Yunnan

Positive changes can be effected from seats of families and seats of government. However, there is a third source of guidance, often overlooked, from which families and governments can learn: the cultural practices of indigenous people. These can be toolboxes of heterodox solutions for addressing areas of systemic inadequacy. The cultural practices of non-majority peoples offer families and policymakers the creative space to imagine what a recast society could look like.

China officially recognises 56 ethnic groups within its borders. With approximately 1.3 billion members, the Han Chinese are the dominant ethnic group in the country, comprising 92 percent of the total population. The Dai people, on the other hand, comprise about 0.1 percent of the country’s population, most of whom are scattered across the remote mountain valleys of Yunnan Province.

Though their numbers are few, their traditional customs could profoundly impact the lives of women across China.

The Dai are no strangers to CIFOR-ICRAF. Staff from CIFOR-ICRAF’s China Program have been learning about their livelihood strategies and adaptations for years. Recently, a team from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, surveyed households in Xishuangbanna, a prefecture bordering Thailand with many established Dai communities, to better understand how these isolated farmers are coping with falling rubber prices across the globe, culminating in a working paper.

Dai households are characterised by a family structure of matrilocal residency. In lay terms, this simply means the husband moves into the wife’s hometown after marriage. At first glance, this may not seem significant. However, this practice appears in direct contradistinction to patrilocal residency, widely practised throughout China and other parts of Asia, in which the wife moves into the husband’s hometown after marriage.

Whereas patrilocal residency has deep ties to Confucian ethics and has shaped China’s broad kinship system for thousands of years, the matrilocal residency of the Dai first emerged in kingdoms beyond ancient China’s borders. There is still contention among scholars regarding the historical development but the general consensus is that economic factors, such as labour and resource endowments, outweighed traditional cultural factors in enabling its spread among Dai communities.

We can learn much from the Dai. Matrilocal residency embeds women’s empowerment into broader rural community structures, leading to higher levels of gender equality in Dai villages.

Across China, it is commonplace for women to ‘marry out’ into their husband’s family, forfeiting land tenure rights in their home village. Dai families, however, tend to own more land and women seldom marry out; rather, most men ‘marry in’ to their wife’s home. This inversion of standard practice affords significant leverage to women, who maintain their traditional claims to the land, providing financial stability and a safety net in the case of divorce. These men tend to come from resource-starved communities and marrying into resource-rich Dai families that lack labourers is a form of market equilibrium. This casts the marital vows in an economic hue that would appear to be a net good for rural communities: a husband from a poorer village could find better economic prospects through marriage into a resource-rich Dai household, solving its labour shortages, while the daughter enjoys strong familial support systems and an enhanced bargaining position.

Women benefit greatly from close residence with consanguineous family members, which is an anthropological term that simply means ‘related by blood’. The significance of this can be easy to miss, especially by Western observers unfamiliar with different marital residency arrangements. Speaking generally, in China, mothers-in-law have a reputation for treating daughters-in-law poorly. This is because, as mentioned above, the wife typically marries into the husband’s home and is isolated from immediate family members who might otherwise offer protection. It is a relationship fraught with potential for abuse, given the mother-in-law’s general authority in the household and the daughter-in-law’s lower status and obvious vulnerability. Even today, the subject is regularly debated at all levels of Chinese society. Dai women, though, tend to remain in their natal household and are shielded from the pressures of this typical relationship. In Dai homes, researchers have noted lower levels of domestic abuse, given the presence of stronger familial support networks, suggesting that their unique marital arrangement avoids thorny issues with mothers-in-law.

When women reside with consanguineous family members, they benefit from a strengthened intergenerational alliance in the household. Their parents can reduce the caretaking load, helping them look after their children and assist with other caretaking chores. In patrilocal residency arrangements, these responsibilities tend to solely fall on the shoulders of the daughter-in-law. The matrilocal system lessens women’s experience of time poverty and frees them to pursue training or business opportunities beyond the household. They are not only insulated from exploitation but are empowered to receive training and experience otherwise unavailable to them.

How could these practices positively impact rural women not only in China but around the world? One of the biggest takeaways is that legal protection for female land-use rights is paramount. Women typically lose land tenurial rights in their natal villages when they marry out, stripping them of their legal safety net. When they maintain these rights in their natal village, however, they also maintain leverage and decision-making power, becoming an equal voice in the marriage, leading to lower rates of domestic violence. If ‘marrying out’ did not imply lost tenurial rights in their natal villages, it may significantly bolster the resilience and bargaining power of daughters-in-law.

One potential issue that may arise is increasing social stigma for men who ‘marry out’, as it contradicts the Confucian duty by which men are often bound in China’s countryside, indeed, filial piety and ancestor worship are crucial cultural practices for rural men in societies worldwide. It is hoped that the exigencies of economic rebalancing between labour and resources in the countryside will reduce the stigma of men who marry out, as traditional responsibilities are renegotiated in a modern context. Education will play an important role in delivering the message that gender equality leads to whole-of-society improvements, especially in rural contexts.

Ultimately, what we can learn from the Dai people is that empowering women generates better household and community outcomes.

Final thoughts

The world has come far. The difference in opportunities between men and women has never been smaller in all human history. China, the most-populous nation in the world, has made enormous strides in equalizing the gap between men and women, which is particularly challenging given the sheer scale of its agrarian-based population and only recent economic ascendancy.

And yet, progress still comes slowly. It is hoped that combining a revolution in family attitudes, advancing pro-women policies and learning from indigenous people can generate the spark needed for rapid advancement in women’s rights to ignite and truly blaze into the future. On this International Day of Women, in a world shaped by a pandemic, climate change and geopolitical unpredictability, let us honour the victories of our foremothers by shining our light on the shadow of oppression wherever it may appear until the dark is seen no more.

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