Media Portrayal of Women in China

In her lecture, Ms. O’Connell discussed the shift in portrayal of women in television series and the film industry. She shows sitcom clips from the 1960s and the 1970s, highlighting the evolution of how the public perceives women. This topic resonates with our discussion on Disney films, the gender stereotypes of which often impact younger children as to their imagination of manhood and womanhood.

While watching her lecture, I realized that a similar evolution has taken place in my native China as well. During the Maoist era, when media and films were limited to official propaganda, women were often portrayed as the backbone of the communist revolution, supporting male revolutionaries from the backstage through medical work and community organization—they were not confined to the homes, but were deployed to the professional fields as well. This depiction is based on Mao’s interpretation of gender equality, that women ‘hold up half the sky.’ In fact, this is a reflection of the Maoist ideal that the workforce and household matters went hand in hand, and that family building was a critical fragment in communal life.

This portrayal was consistent up until the Cultural Revolution, when Deng Xiaoping opened up China’s economy to the rest of the world, welcoming more open ideas. Meanwhile, international movies, particularly American ones, were first introduced to Communist China, as Chinese film directors began to model after Western productions. Films were no longer just a tool for propaganda, but they also reflected the trivialities of life, as stories shifted from the communist revolution to romance, comedy, and thriller. Both of these two factors changed the ‘ideal woman’ in Chinese media, as films focused not only on her ability to contribute to society, but also their romantic and sexual appeals—which had once been a taboo under Maoism.

The Dengist era saw the Chinese portrayal of women on TV merge with the American one. Contemporary Chinese films and TV series are significantly more diverse, and while ‘strong women’ are often featured in these media, they are often expected to conform to gender roles—or at least their strength is something to be criticized by the audience. In that sense, while some progressivism has emerged in the TV depiction of gender, the traditional stereotypes, both domestic and imported from the West, are often reflected in subtle manners.