Battle of the sexes: Can men be trained to accept gender equality?

When comedian Yang Li shot to stardom two years ago with her punchline that many men are "so mediocre yet so confident," her barb was a shot across the bow of China's gender war.

She was criticized by many men, including celebrities and academics.

"I don't hate men," she repeatedly explained. "This is just comedy."

Still, comedy often masks inconvenient truths. Like the fact that many women feel men don't pull their weight in household responsibilities. Like a suspicion that even in the 21st century, many men tend to regard women as inferior beings.

In 2015, Fang Gang, a Beijing sexologist and sociologist, founded a gender-equality group counseling program focused on what he called "male virtue." It was a first in China, but it failed to elicit much interest. Only two men participated, and the project was soon suspended.

But as the gender war picked up pace, Fang resuscitated the idea in September, with plans for "male virtue" programs in three major cities.

Ti Gong

The Shanghai program is headed by Zhang Zhihui, who holds a doctorate in contemporary literature. He said the program aims to promote gender equality and oppose gender-based violence.

"It's all about male participation," Fang explained after Shanghai Daily joined a recent online session of the program. "Men must not be absentee participants in households anymore."

The idea of "male virtue" sessions drew a lot of criticism when Fang first unveiled the program. Some people thought he was trying to train men to be obedient, just like the then-popular "female virtue" schools that taught women how to be docile and take a back seat to men.

"I called it 'male virtue' as a sarcastic counter-offensive to the 'female virtue' schools," Fang said. "Those schools were all over the headlines back then, and the name does attract attention in raising awareness."

Virtue training for women has all but disappeared, but its male offshoot seems to have struck somewhat of a chord.

"There have been great changes in society in recent years," Fang said. "More people are discussing the role of fathers and gender equality. The Internet has accelerated such discussions."

Indeed, gender-related topics are usually guaranteed to trend on social media platforms.

"I'm just so fed up with all those 'steel-straight men' on Weibo," said Fanny Fan, a married luxury industry executive in her early 30s with two children.

"Steel-straight men," gangtie zhinan (钢铁直男), refers to men who are not empathetic with women's perspectives and are not even willing to try to understand them.

"I get regular briefings on hot social media topics related to our products, and they often deliberately include the most extreme misogynist comments," she said. "Sometimes I get so angry that I want to go fight the 'steel-straight men' on Weibo."

Yang Jia, a 26-year-old man who works in the makeup industry, said he was sympathetic with comedian Yang, but he said he gets upset with what he calls "extreme feminist comments" on social media platforms and finds peace in real life.

"Some of the hate speeches are really crazy, like calling all men a 'waste of oxygen' or saying they have 'no need to exist'," he said. "Thank to my job, I'm usually quite sympathetic to women's perspectives, but I don't like the extremism, so I try to restrict my time on social media. It works because you don't see people in real life spouting such extreme things."

Yang added that his feminist friends in real life are more moderate and willing to discuss.

Fang said social media platforms tend to magnify the topic.

"Of course, there are real-life gender issues, and such confrontations have always existed," Fang said. "The difference now is that you have some extreme voices on social media, which provoke extreme reactions. So it all looks worse, when, in reality, there has been progress in gender-equality awareness."

The fourth survey of the Social Status of Women in China, released last year, shows that about 97 percent of the 30,000 nationwide male and female respondents aged between 18 and 64 agreed that women enjoy a more favorable social environment now.

The survey, conducted every 10 years since 1990, is a collaboration of the All-China Women's Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics.

It assesses the status of women mainly in the fields of education, economics, social security, politics, marriage, family, health and legal protections. Compared with a decade ago, great improvements have been recorded.

IC Photo

For family decisions like having a child, buying a house or making an investment, around 90 percent of respondents said decisions are made with spouses, up from about 75 percent in 2010.

But the same survey also shows that the time spent by women on household responsibilities averaged 154 minutes a day, still almost double that of men.

Female executive Fan thinks her husband is better than the average but still hasn't gone far enough.

"I actually do want to send my husband to a 'male virtue' class, but I would need to find a surreptitious way to get him to go," Fan said, half-jokingly.

"He acknowledges that we are equal and that he needs to share duties, but saying so is one thing, doing so is another. If a 'male virtue' class could really raise his awareness, why not?"

According to Fang's 2015 manual, the program is divided into 20 sessions and aims to help men reject outdated gender stereotypes and learn how to become better spouses, fathers and even work colleagues.

The training sessions ask men to put themselves in the shoes of women, like how women feel when they have to drop everything if a baby is crying. The course even has men putting a basketball under their shirts to feel what it's like to be pregnant.

Fang is currently training regional heads like Zhang via online courses, and hopes to start offline workshops early next year.

Zhang, however, said he is somewhat concerned about the lack of interest in offline workshops.

"Some men may not have the time or energy, while others probably are loathe to admit that they might need such training," he said.

Chairman Mao Zedong once famously said that "women hold up half the sky." It may be some time before that weight is evenly balanced.

Ti Gong