Imagine being constantly discriminated, powerless, neglected and unwanted. That’s something females in China felt in a daily basis. While China’s population is increasing day by day, women’s rights are diminishing and are being left behind. Throughout the years, women have never been treated properly. They were always treated negatively and looked down on. In China, the government had made a gender equality law in 1949 but even after this law, women were still being discriminated. Women didn’t have any power and when they got married, they were basically considered their husbands property. Men have the power to abuse and hit their wife which is acceptable. Not only were women treated poorly, kids were even neglected. There was a policy called the One Child Policy in China where the baby had to be a male. If the baby was a girl, some parents would end up killing the baby girl, abandoning it, or having an abortion. Women were forced into doing things that they weren’t comfortable with. Not only did they get abused, had to kill their child if it was a girl, provide a son for the family to take over, but they also had to bind their feet. Luckily, customs are changing over time and women aren’t forced to give up their babies and bind their feet.
Back in the days, women didn’t have any rights or say in life. In 1949, the Chinese government created a gender equality law which was promoted to protect women’s right but even after it was created, women were still discriminated. When women got married, they were known as their husbands property. The article titled “Chinese Women’s Rights”, says “It is very common in China for women to get abused. It is found acceptable in some parts of China for men to abuse their wives” which means that the husband is able to hit his wife and abuse her. This is worse because the wife couldn’t report it or stop it since it was accepted. “Many authorities don’t report abuse because they think that wife abuse is a family matter”. Most people think woman getting abused by her husband is okay because it’s a family matter. Most women don’t tell anyone about this because if they tell, they might get kicked out of the family and have nowhere to go, so they just accept this to keep their family going. Even though it is the husband’s duty to find a job and run the family, it is also the woman’s responsibility to keep the family in line and provide for the family such as having a son.
Women had to go through so much pain just to be accepted into marriage and society. Foot binding was one of the things women in China had to do back in the day. Foot binding is the process of girls having their feet squeezed into small shoes that were three inches long and this would prevent their feet from growing. Mothers would start binding their daughters feet at a young age because of how delicate their bones were. In an article titled “Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors”, it states “Young bones are soft, and can break more easily. At the time, bound feet were a status symbol, the only way for a woman to marry into money,” which shows that foot binding was a way for women to get married into a family with money and was a mandatory requirement. Foot binding was outlawed in 1912 and some of the women who had their feet binded now speak up about their experiences. Zhou Guizhen says “I regret binding my feet, I can’t dance, I can’t move properly. I regret it a lot. But at the time, if you didn’t bind your feet, no one would marry you.” This shows us that if you wanted to get married, you had to go through pressure and pain like Zhou did when she was young. The tradition of foot binding had changed in the 20th century because now women aren’t forced to do it.
In China, they had a law called One Child Policy which meant each family could have only one child and that child had to be a boy. Families who were expecting a daughter as their first child would sometimes either kill the baby when it was born, the mother had to get an abortion or they would leave the baby somewhere outside. In a blog titled All Girls Allowed, it said “one field researcher has concluded that he is fairly certain that most of the 13 million annual abortions are forced.” Sometimes if the mother wanted to keep the baby knowing it was a girl, she would be forced to have an abortion in order to get rid of the fetus. Husbands even left their pregnant wife if they found out the baby was going to be a girl and most of the time, the husbands side of the family even forced the wife to abort the baby because it was a girl. But as time went on, rules began to change and things were improving. Charities began to open up and help women raise their daughters because its hard for women to work and raise kids on their own if no one helps them. It has been reported that there has been 13 million abortions done in China per year and 35,000 abortions per day. Abortions in China are slowly decreasing and now women can keep their baby even if it is a girl.