Yanwen’s blog

March 8th is International Women's Day (IWD), celebrated in China and many other countries outside the United States. There are plenty of celebrations today in China, like giving women the day off. A day worth celebrating.

There are different explanations of the genesis of IWD. Some say the women's liberation movement goes back to 1909 New York with the focus on women's rights, including suffrage. Some traced back to a protest by women garment workers in New York City in 1857. It is definitely linked to the First World War and the women’s movements during the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Among western voting countries, New Zealand was the first country that granted women the legal right to vote in 1893, Australia did it in 1902, Finland 1906, Norway 1913.

The U.S., Johnny-come-lately, did it through 19th Amendment in 1919, taking advantage of the urge of women's liberation movement following WW I, and still is behind many developed countries in terms of political power.

At my previous work place, nearly all of my American colleagues had never heard of IWD. Not a few of them believe that women can work outside but should not mess up in politics like Clinton's wife.

In Chinese, 妇女能顶半边天 (fù nǚ néng dǐng bàn biān tiān), meaning: Woman can hold up half the sky. The implied meaning is women are an equal part in society, not subordinate to men.

Women's subordinate position is still deeply rooted in many cultures, believes, and traditions. Such as, women are deprived of the right to education in some cultures. Believe it or not, there are still countries today that practice female genital mutilation. 

Baby, you've come a long way but still have a long journey ahead.

Yesterday I heard a Ted talk about Chinese peasants migrating to cities. It's so well-done that I feel compelled to share it.

The speaker stayed for about two years in a big city in south China, working and living with some female peasants, now assembling line workers. While we debate about globalization, we have neglected to hear the voice of the workers themselves impacted. That's what she is trying to get.

These former peasants choose to leave their villages in order to make big money, to learn new skills and to see the big world outside. She learned about their daily interests. Their living conditions were very substandard, yet were better than their village life.

She made acquaintance with an 18-year-old girl named Min, who changed jobs 5 times over the course of 2 years from an assembly line worker in an electronics factory to a lucrative job in the purchasing department of a hardware factory. Later she married a fellow migrant worker, moved to his village, gave birth to 2 daughters, and saved enough money to buy a second-hand Buick for herself and an apartment her parents in the village. Later Min moved back to the city alone taking up a new job. In an email to the speaker, she explained, "A person should have some ambition while she is young, so that in old age she can look back on her life and feel that it was not lived to no purpose." 

Life is tough for them. The speaker expected to find  them feeling depressed and miserable and full of complaints. Instead, she found these young women 聪明、有趣、勇敢、大方 (cōngmíng 、 yǒuqù 、 yǒnggǎn 、 dàfāng), smart, funny, brave and generous.

Across China, there are 150 million workers like Min, one third of them are women who have left their villages to work in factories, hotels, restaurants or construction sites in big cities. Together they make up the largest migration in modern history.

The speaker ended with this reminder: It is the globalization that begins in Chinese village like this and ends with iPhones in our pockets and Nikes on our feet. I hope people are aware of the existence of these people and think of them while using their electronics every day.

I never realize that an ethic theory can throw some lights on good parenting.

There is an ethical theory called consequentialism. That is people judge whether or not something is right by its consequences. This is used to judge past actions. In fact, consequences can be the basis for directing future behavior, especially in young children. 

For example, when a 3-year-old uses crying to express his desire for candies, his parent rewards him with it this time. Now he learns the consequence of crying is to see his tiny wish come true. The crying behavior works like magic.

Most of children's behavior might be as simple as that. They learn what to do and what not to do based on the outcome of their immediate past actions. With more actions and behavior in one way comes certain character and personality. 

There is an interesting experiment in 1960s in an elementary school classroom. The teacher used games to teach the students about class rules. The kids are divided into small groups and play games for 10 minutes. They will be rewarded with extra playing time if they follow the rules. Otherwise, no game playing.

Another thought, perhaps this good behavior game works on all of us. Initially we all learn to conduct ourselves based on the consequences of our previous actions.

Consequence is very crucial in children's learning and socialization. Parents won't go wrong if they pay more attention to the consequences of their behaviors and words. Keep in mind that actions and words have indelible consequences children, desirable or undesirable.

That's why there is a Chinese saying, 父母是孩子的第一个老师, parents are children's first teachers. Be a wise one.

I came upon this book last year -- Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels by Catherine A. Sanderson. An interesting story there reminds me of a Chinese saying, 三个和尚没水喝 (sān gè hé shang méi shuǐ hē), its literal meaning is: Three monks have no water to drink. This is the third part of the saying: If there is one monk, he will fetch water for himself. If there are two, they will fetch water together. But if there are three or more, none will take it upon himself to fetch water, thus no water for all. It carries the same meaning as this: "Everybody's business is nobody's business."

The story goes like this. In a small village, every house has a vineyard for making its own wine. The town has this custom -- on New Year's day, each family brings a bottle of their best wine of the year to a town gathering and pour it in a huge wine barrel, so all the people enjoy it over a feast. 

One year, a husband has this idea, our bottle of wine is the best in town. When we mix with others' wines, nobody can enjoy our wine. Why not keep it ourselves and fill the bottle with boiled water and pour it in? Nobody can tell anyway. So he did.

But he quietly shared this secret with one of his relatives who started playing the same trick. The practice spread slowly and surely. Of course, the quality of this barrel of wine at the New Year's dinner is getting worse and worse.

Eventually, one year, people turned on the taps on the barrels and out flowed pure white water!

The author used the story to illustrate how social slackness and irresponsibility can snowball and eventually generate more and more destructive consequences.

When our relatives sit together talking, I have noticed two different styles of an adult and her son. One of my sisters habitually expresses herself in an assertive manner, zero tolerance of opposing voice, showing your typical dominant personality.

Her son appears to be the opposite. He cares more about maintaining harmony with others, not to provoke or rub someone the wrong way. So he is gentle and quiet, seldom talks without being asked, never raising different voices. 

This resembles the scene in one of my former work places where one colleague talked in similar fashion, making others quiet.

I used to think perhaps others don’t have much meaningful to share. Actually this pattern is the result of interactions between them over the course of a long period of time.

Very often, in our fervor to express ourselves, we forget to consider the impacts of our manner on our listeners, that our forceful manner of speaking and reacting to different voices could sound intimidating and discouraging to others to talk. We are so dominant that we forget to give others opportunities to speak, especially in a family. The consequences of this dominant style may include raising a child who prefers to be quiet and bury his voice.

A Chinese saying describes this style 一人独断 (yì rén dú duàn), meaning:  one person makes decisions disregarding others, the opposite of being democratic.