In China, conservative censors continue to ensure that the country's culture always lags a bit behind its rapidly changing economy and society. Arts venues routinely practice self-censorship to preclude government interference. So it was a bold move when the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center (SDAC) announced plans to stage a Chinese-language adaptation of "The Vagina Monologues." Eve Ensler's controversial script had been performed twice before in China, in an English production for expatriate audiences in Shanghai in 2002, and a student performance in Guangzhou at the end of last year. Never before, however, had it received the sort of mainstream, public audience offered by SDAC, a state-owned theater and the largest in Shanghai. Cosponsored with a couple of popular magazines, the production generated a headily positive advance buzz, and the first weeks' tickets sold out well in advance of its scheduled opening on February 10.

     "The Vagina Monologues" was not the first time the theater has pushed the envelope of acceptable topics; it previously has tackled other prickly issues like AIDS and sexual harassment. "The Vagina Monologues", like David Mamet's "Oleanna" last fall, seemed a relatively safe bet, due to its foreign origins. So it seemed, until SDAC abruptly announced the production "postponed". A source with the theater clarified that the city government had shut the play down due to discomfort with the word "vagina" in the media and marquees, saying it was "inappropriate for China's national situation." It marks the first play to be completely banned in Shanghai since the Cultural Revolution; prior offending productions have been forbidden from publicizing but at least allowed to complete partial runs. A few days later, a separate, smaller performance of "The Vagina Monologues", in English at a Beijing art gallery and scheduled for the 14th, was shut down, supposedly for lacking a performance permit.

     The government's squeamishness partly reflects its reticence towards discussing sex and sexuality. However, in a country where affairs and prostitution are commonplace, the media actively debates teen sex education programs, and penis jokes abound, it also reflects a double standard and a general reluctance to examine women's issues. Chinese women are among the most liberated in Asia, thanks to Communism. Now thanks to Capitalism they enjoy unprecedented freedom - of education, of lifestyle choice and of personal appearance - but the market-driven transformation has also brought diminishing respect for women as equal participants in the economy and the society. A popular Chinese adage proclaims that "woman hold up half the sky", but their half is generally heavier, less prestigious and poorly paid. Women's opportunities have risen along with the economic tide, but at slower rates than men from similar backgrounds. Sexist stereotypes pervade society from the farm to the export zone sweatshop to the foreign-invested office tower. Such attitudes are strong even in the minds of women themselves, who use hopes of rich husbands and their own supposed weakness as excuses to retreat from the increasingly competitive job market, providing employers with a basis for bias against the women who stay.

     "During the Cultural Revolution, many mistakes were made, but it also made China the most progressive place in East Asia," observed Sun Shijin, professor of Sociology at Fudan University. The Chinese Communist Party from its infancy aggressively criticized traditionally rigid Confucian sex roles, making women's equality a major part of their program along with wealth and land distribution. After their 1949 victory, the Communists pushed women into the workplace, outlawed foot-binding and prostitution, and celebrated women as comrades contributing equally to the revolution. In the films, songs, books and plays of the 1950s and 1960s, the brave female soldier, farmer, or worker was a celebrated trope, encouraging women to focus on their Socialist character and contribution to society rather than on their looks and families. Reality was a bit less poetic; Professor Sun stresses that, while, "women's rights improved during the Cultural Revolution, individual rights declined." Women were forced into backbreaking factory work, all while reproducing prolifically as the state disastrously encouraged until the one-child policy's reprieve in the 1970s. While women figured among the country's top leadership, they got there only through relationships with powerful men, and the havoc wreaked by Mao's wife Jiang Qing instilled the country with a continuing aversion to female leaders.

     "After Liberation, women were made very equal," recalls Shao Dangdi, president of Taipingyang-ING Aetna Insurance and a 58-year-old grandmother. "The government promoted women's equality, but also it was necessary for family survival: you couldn't live on a single income. Now, you can." Ms. Shao has observed a precipitous fall in the percentage of women in senior positions, and blames the changing economic climate. "Work units were required to maintain a rough gender balance in all departments and at all levels." Privatization and deregulation have all but eliminated such quotas. "The workplace is so competitive now. There are too many educated young people vying for too few positions, so employers pick the men first."

     The top-down nature of women's liberation under Mao may explain the current backlash. Chinese society now sees men as wage-earners, women as care-givers and beautiful creatures. The hard-working female comrades of yesteryear, many still fiercely independent and refusing to keep mirrors in the house as they indulge bourgeois vanity, have given way to their granddaughters' attitude of "We don't get promotions, but we get to dress pretty!" It is widely believed that women's relative physical weakness makes them less capable and energetic workers even in office settings, that they lack the stamina for long hours or challenging tasks, and that pregnancy and childbirth further weakens them. Women are assumed to be naturally less intelligent and less motivated than men.

     "Women are freer than men, because they are not held responsible for providing for the family," claims Zhao Yifei, Human Resources Executive at a beverage company. "If a man is in a company 10 years without a high position, he's looked down on, but it's normal for a woman. Society doesn't provide room on the ladder for women, and women don't have the same requirements as men for success. Women are happy if their husband is paid well, as long as their job satisfies them personally."

     A recent survey by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences found that women under 30 are more willing to stay at home than previous generations, but added that their aversion to working stemmed in part from repeatedly encountering discrimination. Xu Anqi, who conducted the study, stresses that "many companies do not want to hire women." The most common forms of white collar discrimination in China are pressure to enter only more "feminine" fields, a very low glass ceiling and prejudice against women of child-bearing age. The gap in professions and positions, rather than different pay scales, explains the why urban women's salaries average only 77.4% that of men's.

     Chinese professional men gravitate to IT, sales, law and engineering, while women dominate marketing, public relations, human resources. Peer and parental pressure nudges women into certain fields, men into others. "Administration is a female field because traditionally females are more patient, good with odds and ends, so even if there is no advertised requirement for sex, applications for an administrative job will be 90% female," says Zhao Yifei. Company expectations are also skewered; Jane Shen recalls a former employer who turned down a female applicant for an IT position because they felt a woman would not be willing to work the irregular hours required. Chinese high schools are six years, and students must enter a specialty school after their second year, Ms. Zhao explains, so a student's career path is decided in her teen years. "The direction is set early, pressure comes from schools as well as parents. Parents judge profession by gender, and boys are considered smarter and able to do better at the technical schools, so boys are herded into technical schools, girls into language and art schools. Just like you see few male Kindergarten teachers."

     "It's really a social improvement to allow women to find jobs that are appropriate for them," opines Professor Sun. "Now we respect the differences between men and women, that they are suited to different fields, like men are better at and enjoy more things likes science, math and law."

     Even within these predominantly female fields, with a few exceptions like print journalism, it very difficult for a woman to rise any higher than middle management. The majority of PR and HR departments bustle with scores of busy young women, and the only man to be seen is in the back, behind a glass wall in the manager's office. This results partly from the greater pressure on men to advance up the corporate ladder, partly from the baby problem.

     The distractions of impending maternity are the primary justification given for not hiring or not promoting women. "The main issue is that women will want to have a baby," claims Wu Haiyun, a reporter with Liberation Daily. "Some companies force women to sign contracts that they won't have a baby for 5 years." She reminds that Vice Premiere Wu Yi, the highest-ranking female official in China, is single. "Women have to make big personal sacrifices." A recent survey in Beijing showed that 50% of the highest-earning professional women there had remained single.

     Although women are legally entitled to maternity leave, and despite laws prohibiting such discrimination against prospective mothers as the no-baby contracts, the Chinese legal system is notoriously toothless. Personal injury lawsuits are rare in China, and anti-discrimination laws are not enforced. Despite the laws, and that China's grandparents shoulder the bulk of childcare, many consider discrimination against young mothers justified. Sun Shilian, Professor Sun's wife and a reporter at Xinhua News Agency, maintains that, "women understand that a company doesn't want to have to 'take care' of them."

     One source of neo-traditional social stereotypes is Western-style mass media entertainment and advertising, a new phenomenon over the last 15 years. In the absence of an open press, they provide most Chinese with their primary source of information about their changing society and its norms. The suspicion through which they filter government news sources does not, amazingly, extend to unregulated advertising claims; medications promising to make students smart, women beautiful and men successful clog the airways and enjoy brisk sales.

     "Ads never build the image that women should be strong or successful, just that they should be pretty," observes Zhang Zheng, a 25-year-old brand manager. Professional women are only depicted in terms of their consumption of beauty care products. "There are only two images of women: the pretty girl and the good mother." The pretty girl predominates, and invariably is dangerously thin, scantily clad, and listlessly passive. Grrrl Power has yet to arrive in China; female frailty is in. Seeking an impossibly unhealthy beauty ideal, many professional women are malnourished, reinforcing stereotypes of feminine weakness.

     Mass media's sexual objectification of women has created a society where women are judged primarily by their appearance, secondarily if at all by their personality and accomplishments. According to Professor Sun, "on many levels, such as in marriage, men rely on their societal status, income, personality to find a partner, while woman can only use their looks." Little wonder, then, that a women's looks are often a major factor in her hiring as well, contributing to her being treated as a sexual object in the workplace. After years of tabooed silence, sexual harassment to the forefront of public discussion this summer after two highly publicized sexual harassment cases were filed in Beijing and Wuhan. A survey at the time by Beijing Evening Post found that 71% of women in the Capital had been victims of sexual harassment, primarily from their male managers; another done in 2002, after China's first-ever sexual harassment case in Xi'an, put the number even higher at 84%.

     China currently has no law against sexual harassment, only stipulations protecting the citizen's right of reputation and personal dignity, and entitlement to compensation in case of their infringement. However the burden of proof is high, resulting in unsuccessful prosecution of all but one of China's handful of sexual harassment cases to date. Moreover, Chinese notions of "face" and of feminine decorum make women reluctant to speak out. In a survey on Tom.com, 80% of respondents opposed women taking sexual harassment claims before the courts.

     In October 2003, Sichuan Province passed a law forbidding male officials from hiring young, female secretaries. The concern was not so much sexual harassment as young women using affairs with their bosses for material and professional gain. "It's not sexual harassment when both parties are willing," maintains Zhang Zheng, telling of a friend in marketing who gets her pick of top clients by a "special relationship" with her married boss. "Girls today want adventure, and don't mind making the sacrifice of dating their boss to get a promotion." Even though office affairs often the only way for a woman to get a promotion, women like Ms. Zhang see it as a fair leveling of the otherwise unequal playing field, dismissing the disadvantages to those not sought out by or unreceptive to their bosses advances.

     Despite its ubiquity, workplace discrimination remains little discussed. Sexual harassment is now a hot topic in the Chinese press, but the broader sexism that causes it is studiously avoided. A news search on Sohu.com, China's most popular search engine, brought up 474 hits on sexual harassment, but only 4 on sexual discrimination. The public considers most forms of discrimination "fair" despite being illegal, while the government largely pretends discrimination no longer exists because it is illegal.

     Such inconsistencies persist because China lacks a vibrant feminist movement to challenge them. Out of fear of political opposition, independent organizations and movements of all stripes are strictly prohibited. Women's advocacy takes place only under the auspices of the official All-China Women's Federation. The Women's Federation lobbies for legal changes and public awareness while implementing social programs for women. Their recent campaigns include calling for explicit laws against sexual harassment and domestic violence, for an extension of women's retirement age from the current 55 to men's 60, and for better enforcement of existing anti-discrimination clauses.

     However, the Women's Federation operates primarily in the governmental realm, with little impact on society and the workplace. Championing gender equality is now considered an androgynous anachronism like the Mao suit. According to Professor Sun, most young women today feel that the Women's Federation and its efforts are "silly". Growing admission of the problem of sexual harassment marks an improvement, and may eventually broaden into a larger discussion of sexual discrimination, but in the meanwhile it also reinforces stereotypes of women as weak and helpless.

     However, Chinese citizens are cautiously starting to wield the law to demand rights, to property and privacy as well as fair treatment in the workplace. Most recently, a Shenzhen woman, Chen Lin, filed a lawsuit after being denied civil employment for not meeting a height requirement. Ms. Chen's case was rejected by the courts, but has been championed in legal circles. However, the Chinese legal system is as slow to improve as it is improving slowly, and its more outspoken critics risk imprisonment. Daring attempts, like the productions of "The Vagina Monologues", to frankly address women's issues continue to be silenced. Popular stereotypes remain firmly entrenched and rarely challenged, and as with so many of China's social problems, sexual discrimination will probably get worse before it gets better.