Study tracks shift in women’s portrayal in party paper
SCMP · 1 SOURCESabout 1 hour ago2 MIN
Summary
A study by researchers in Hong Kong found that language in People’s Daily increasingly associated women with domestic and caregiving roles, while links to public-facing roles weakened in recent years. The analysis examined 125,532 articles published from 1990 to 2023 and treated the party newspaper as a window into official thinking.
Key Points
- The study analysed 125,532 People’s Daily articles published between 1990 and 2023 to assess how the Communist Party framed women’s place in society.
- It was written by Wang Jia of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Zhang Ruiyu of the University of Hong Kong, and published in Frontiers in Sociology in May.
- Researchers built two word sets: public-sphere terms such as “leading woman”, “fighter”, “career” and “entrepreneurship”, and private-sphere terms including “family”, “childbearing”, “housework” and “loving mother”.
- They found references linking women to the private sphere remained consistently strong, with early-1990s language already closely aligned with family, caregiving and domestic roles.
- The article places the findings against the party’s earlier gender-equality messaging, including Mao Zedong’s “women hold up half the sky” line and post-1949 reforms such as the Marriage Law.
Why It Matters
For Hong Kong readers, the study offers a measurable way to track how official mainland discourse on gender may be changing over time. Because People’s Daily is the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, shifts in its language can be read as a clue to broader policy priorities and social messaging.