In South Korea, which is where I was born, there is a larger gender discrimination issue compared to other highly developed countries. Many have treated women unfairly over hundreds of years; women were only able to compete in the Olympics from the 1900 Paris Games onwards.
在韩国，也就是我出生的地方，与其他高度发达国家相比，性别歧视问题更大。 数百年来，许多人不公平地对待女性；从1900年巴黎奥运会开始，女性只能参加奥运会。
And according to SavetheChildren.org, it will take over 200 years to reach gender equality in the United States alone.
根据SavetheChildren.org的说法，仅在美国实现性别平等就需要200多年。
So that future generations can inherit a society with absolute equality, the issue of gender inequality worldwide can be solved by a change in the opinions as to what certain genders can and cannot do. Even though gender equality was incorporated into a part of the International Human Rights Law by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December, 1948, there are still many places with unequal pay for women and a large bias in the education and health sectors, as well as a general preference for boys over girls.
为了使子孙后代能够继承一个绝对平等的社会，全球性别不平等问题可以通过改变对某些性别能做什么和不能做什么的看法来解决。 尽管1948年12月10日《世界人权宣言》将性别平等纳入了《国际人权法》的一部分，但仍有许多地方妇女薪酬不平等，教育和卫生部门存在巨大偏见，以及普遍偏爱男孩而不是女孩。
If this worldwide issue is affecting many nations, then how is it impacting the most populated country in the world, China?
如果这个全球性问题正在影响许多国家，那么它如何影响世界上人口最多的国家中国？
“Women hold up half the sky”. This well-known phrase by Chairman Mao Zedong from the 1960s has allowed the people of China to mostly support gender equality going forward.
“女人拿着半个天空”。 毛泽东主席在20世纪60年代就提出了这句话，使中国人民在很大程度上支持向前的性别平等。
However, much gender inequality remains. From early times, men have been the ones to lead households and are known to be the only carriers of their ancestors’ blood. Then there was Confucius who stated that women must act following the requirements of men near them; their fathers when they are young, their husbands when they are married and their sons when they are widowed. Mao’s phrase addressed these stereotypes as to what women could and could not do.
然而，仍然存在许多性别不平等。 从早期开始，男人就是领导家庭的人，众所周知，他们是祖先血脉的唯一载体。 然后孔子说，女人必须按照她们身边的男人的要求行事；她们年轻时是父亲，已婚时是丈夫，丧偶时是儿子。 毛泽东的这句话解决了这些刻板印象，即女性能做什么和不能做什么。
China now asserts full support for gender equality, but the exponential growth and economic development of the nation has also made this a challenge. For instance, the gender gap in China’s labour force widens every year; the increase in the ratio of men to women in businesses that was 9.4 percent is now 14.1 percent.
中国现在声称完全支持性别平等，但该国的指数增长和经济发展也使这成为一项挑战。 例如，中国劳动力的性别差距每年都在扩大；企业中男女比例从9.4%上升到现在14.1%。
Additionally, in the global gender earnings gap rankings, China was last year ranked 106th out of 153 countries, significantly lower than in 2006 when it was in 63rd place. The reasons are governmental and societal.
此外，在全球性别收入差距排名中，中国去年在153个国家中排名第106位，明显低于2006年排名第63位。 原因是政府和社会。
Firstly, there has been a decline in childcare support from the state, which has forced many women to take care of their children on their own while their men go out to earn money.
首先，国家对儿童保育的支持有所减少，这迫使许多妇女独自照顾孩子，而她们的男人则出去赚钱。
And today, fewer and fewer newly-married couples are living with their parents, which has increased women’s parental responsibilities with grandparents of the children not around to help take care of them.
如今，与父母住在一起的新婚夫妇越来越少，这增加了妇女对父母的责任，祖父母不在身边帮助照顾他们。
While China officially supports gender equality, there is still much to do to put an end to implicit bias in employment and parenting roles.
虽然中国正式支持性别平等，但仍有许多工作要做，以结束就业和育儿角色中的隐性偏见。
However, Confucius also, ironically, claimed that everybody should have equal access to education. Indeed, the equal education of both men and women in China has been on the rise; the country’s illiteracy rate decreased from 16.6 percent in 1995 to 7.5 percent in 2018 for all women 15 years old and above. Back in 1949, the illiteracy rate of all citizens in China was even at 80 percent!
然而，具有讽刺意味的是，孔子也声称每个人都应该平等地接受教育。 事实上，中国男女平等教育的水平一直在上升；15岁及以上女性的文盲率从1995年的16.6%下降到2018年的7.5%。 早在1949年，中国所有公民的文盲率甚至达到80%！
In 2018, women in master’s and doctorate programs represented 51.2 and 40.4 percent of all students in 2018, respectively, up by an average of 22 percent from 23 years ago. Due to such rising education levels, girls are receiving more attention from their families than ever before and are clearly showing that they are also able to get a good job with good earning potential, just like a son could.
2018年，硕士和博士课程的女性分别占2018年所有学生的51.2%和40.4%，比23年前平均上升了22%。 由于教育水平的提高，女孩受到家庭的关注比以往任何时候都多，并清楚地表明她们也能像儿子一样找到一份有良好收入潜力的好工作。
What’s in a (gender-equal) name?
（性别平等）的名字是什么？
In today’s China, there has been a notable change in the passing down of surnames since the end of the one-child policy in late 2015, with more and more people now preferring to give their babies their mother’s family name. As time goes on in the 21st century, last names have become less significant to families, while many parents are also deciding to give their children a combination of both their father and mother’s surnames, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
在今天的中国，自2015年底独生子女政策结束以来，姓氏的传授发生了显著变化，越来越多的人现在更喜欢给孩子取母亲的姓氏。 据《南华早报》报道，随着21世纪的流逝，姓氏对家庭的重要性越来越低，而许多父母也决定给他们的孩子一个父亲和母亲的姓氏。
In 2018, among the 90,000 babies born in Shanghai, 91.2 percent had their father’s surname, 8.8 percent had their mother’s and 2.5 percent had both.
2018年，在上海出生的9万名婴儿中，91.2%有父亲的姓氏，8.8%有母亲的姓氏，2.5%的人两者都有。
So, while China still has gender bias in some sectors, it is working hard and improving equality in others.
因此，虽然中国在某些部门仍然存在性别偏见，但它正在努力改善其他部门的平等。
As a female student who has been studying abroad with people from many different cultures, I believe that although not everyone may think the same nor have similar backgrounds, people should all respect each other as fellow equal human beings, without stereotypical thinking about gender nor race.
作为一名与来自许多不同文化的人一起出国留学的女学生，我认为，虽然不是每个人的想法相同，背景也不同，但人们都应该互相尊重，作为平等的人，不要对性别或种族有刻板的观念。
In China, about 700 million people are women. This means there are many possibilities for how this nation can lead the trend for gender equality, through greater education, job opportunities and equal pay for women. Combined with making child gender preferences a thing of the past, China could become a place of near-absolute gender equality.
在中国，大约有7亿人是女性。 这意味着，通过增加教育、工作机会和妇女同工同酬，这个国家如何引领性别平等的趋势有很多可能性。 再加上让儿童的性别偏好成为过去，中国可能会成为一个近乎绝对的性别平等的地方。
