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  • Reconceiving Women’s Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality
  • Robin R. Wang (bio)
Reconceiving Women’s Equality in China: A Critical Examination of Models of Sex Equality. By Lijun Yuan . Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005.

Reconceiving Women's Equality in China comprises five sections that guide readers through a dark tunnel of popular views of Chinese women. Yuan invites readers to explore four models of "sex equality": (1) traditional, (2) formal, (3) substantive, and (4) equal opportunity, into which she divides Chinese women's status in both the past and the present. Yuan's bases her first model on a generalization of the Confucian attitude toward women. The traditional view "advocates that women's role is to follow and support men" (xv), but as the author tells us, "Confucianism offers valuable thoughts on human nature and relational selfhood that are compatible with feminist investigations of ethical theory of the self" (22). The second model is "the liberal feminist idea of formal equality for women . . . which is anti-Confucian and advocates women's equal rights in education, law, and employment" (xv). This formal view developed during the May Fourth Movement (1919). The third model refers to Mao's vision that "women hold up half the sky" (52), which promoted "women's equality in production, calling for substantive equality between men and women" (xv). The equal opportunity model, according to Yuan, resulted from China's economic reform in the post-Mao period (xv). She presents these models as brief sketches set against a background of assumptions about women's condition in China, relying primarily on secondary materials.

According to the author, all four models have had a common weakness, "namely, the lack of emphasis on empowering women to develop their own visions of equality" (xvi). In other words, Chinese women's full emancipation must be rooted in "women's self-directed consciousness" (125). In the last chapter, Yuan seeks to rescue ill-treated Chinese women from past hopeless social ideas and policies and advocates what she sees as the best option for women: democratic equality. This model contains two principal aspects: "gender awareness or consciousness" and "opposing top-down ideologies" (106). As the author rightly claims, "Women's equality should not be imposed on women by any external authority, but should be sought by women themselves" (105). This [End Page 217] new model demands that women exercise their own decision-making capabilities through the "parity of effective voice" and calls for finding women's voices, hearing women's voices and making "women's voices equally effective to men's at a policy decision-making level" (120). It also "stresses the empowerment of women through the cooperation of various Chinese NGOs and the government through bottom-up rather than top-down state policies" (125).

Only a handful of scholars, Chinese and otherwise, are doing constructive and conceptual work to improve the practical conditions of Chinese women today. Thus the most valuable aspect of this book is the conceptual framework Yuan's gives for returning discussion of Chinese women's current conditions to the academic orbit. Two issues are of particular importance.

The Contents of Women's Consciousness

Yuan claims that the empowerment of Chinese women in today's globalization is not simply about economic advancement but more importantly the development of women's self-consciousness and collective consciousness through democratic social structures. However, this assertion raises questions: What should Chinese women be aware of under a democratic condition? What will constitute a Chinese woman's authentic voice? Although Yuan insightfully notes that Chinese feminists cannot just import Western feminist ideals and agendas to plug into their own culture and practice, she offers few concrete suggestions about what this Chinese gender consciousness might look like.

Two concepts might be helpful in formulating a new gender consciousness in a Chinese context. First, is de (virtue), a person's power. The literal translation of de as virtue in a gendered context can be risky because it is a highly charged and sometimes sexist notion. However, de as virtue can also be appreciated within the context of the Daoist vision of spiritual freedom. Daoist teaching respects and values the female...

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