“China’s women hold up half the sky”. After millennia of being treated as inferiors, the women of China were given Mao Zedong’s famous words saying that they had equal status. But they never became equal. Marriage in China is still predominantly traditional and restrictive for women, who, when she marries, more or less becomes the property of her in-laws. The women therefore opt out of marriage more today, and, after 35 years of child-limiting population control, China today has up to 40 million men of marriageable age, who never get mar­ried – a challenge to the communist regime’s ideal that marriage and the family are the basis for the country’s political stability.

Hear much more about China’s complex equality problem in this conversation between journalist and anthropologist Mette Holm and human rights activist, artist and researcher Zeng Jinyan.

Mette Holm has worked with China for almost five decades. She has studied, lived, worked and travelled there and has written a long succession of books about China. Zeng Jinyan is a post.doc at Lund University, where she researches social activism with a special focus on gender, protest and social media.

Admission to the event costs DKK 100. / Free for members
The price includes admission to the exhibition.