Male and Female

In Prof’s Wang’s lecture, she mentioned that in the “I Ching #37 hexagram (易經)”, the great appropriateness of heaven and earth was described as women belonged to the inside of house and men belonged to the outside of house.  You’d be surprised how this perspective got to spread and internalized in Chinese cultural values. Nowadays, there is still a quite popular saying in China that is always mentioned whenever male and female relationship is involved in a conversation. The saying is 男主外，女主内 which is literally translated as “men’s work centers around outside and women’s work centers around the home”. What is promoted here is that men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers.

The typical role of women has changed a lot in modern China which led to some of the newly invented terms such as “女汉子”. “女” as in female and “汉子” is an informal way to refer to strong and courageous man. As you can guess, 女汉子 is to describe the type of women who are capable of dealing with heavy lifting or physical labors as men without seeking help from men. More interestingly, most of the 女汉子 will normally end up being 剩女 as in leftover women. This is due to their extremely independent characteristics in terms of financially and mentally.

From my friends’ perspectives, they see me as a 女汉子. You may wonder if it’s a commendatory term or a derogatory term. Well, it all depends on your perspective. Younger generation merely treat it as a simple label that doesn’t really define the person. In workplaces, 女汉子 demonstrates with strong work ethics and insightful opinions. In personal life, 女汉子 enjoys being surrounded by friends as well as being alone. They usually build personal interests in wide variety of activities. In terms of love life, they are usually seen as failure due to the long-term single status. In my personal opinion, as a female, the most important thing is to know your needs and be able to fulfill the needs with or without external helps. Sometimes our needs change as life develops into a different phrase. At that time, self-awareness will assist us to become adaptive to changes and new environment.