The social equality between men and women has long been discussed and promoted ever since human civilization stepped into the 21^st century featuring increasing modernization and democracy than ever before. Nevertheless, in China, this equality is being popularized among the public and spread among social consensus, but with much higher difficulties and more challenges that have to be faced than most other countries in the world.

As one of the several countries around the globe enjoying time span of civilization of over 1000 years, Chinese people have long been instilled with the cognition that males and females are so different that they are almost mutually excluded into different categories in terms of social status such as functional characteristics in families and acceptability in career selections. One thing that has to be made clear is that it has been deeply rooted in Chinese people’s mind that giving birth to a boy is much better than to a girl and this notion still remains in this modern world where freedom is in the first place of measuring human rights. The truth is many parents pay more attention to their male offspring, leaving not too much space for female ones. Once girls grow up and get married with the ones they love, their husbands may treat them as being responsible for bearing and educating their children, rather than playing the role of supporting families financially. In career development, women are normally much more disadvantaged once they reach certain age levels, and due to the difference between physical structures, they are usually restricted to engaging in specific roles in the society.

On the other hand, despite the fact that potential discrimination against women still exists, there appears other unique and rather surprising biased notions against men. What is worth noticing is that, when it comes to being strong and hard-core, it usually refers to men rather than women, rendering many males having to pretend to be strong even if they are not and their social responsibility keeps rising as women try to get more from the balance between genders. Another example is that in treating legal conflicts, women are always categorized as the disadvantaged groups, making the males play the dominant role to do harm to others when actually they are the ones being harmed.

To sum up, only when a balance between pursuing social equality is found can human, regardless or their genders, really benefit from being equal.

Zixuan Cheng