Rise of ‘morality schools’ for Chinese women sparks outcry
Emergence reflects the erosion in the status of women since the launch of economic reforms in the 1980s, activist says
The video shows students at the so-called female morality school in northeastern China getting up at 4:30am to scrub floors and being taught not to resist if their husbands beat them.
Shot with a hidden camera and posted on a popular Chinese video website, it sparked a storm of criticism of the school and highlighted complaints that the status of women is deteriorating under the rule of a Communist Party that promised them equality.
In the recording, students at the Fushun Traditional Culture School were shown being told to put aside career aspirations and, in one instructor’s words, “shut your mouths and do more housework”. One group of students was shown practising bowing to apologise to their husbands.
“Don’t fight back when beaten. Don’t talk back when scolded. And, no matter what, don’t get divorced,” a female teacher says in the post on Pear Video, a Beijing-based online platform for short videos.
“Women should just stay at the bottom level of the society and not aspire for more,” another teacher says.
Such schools appear to be growing in popularity, although it is unclear how many China has, according to researchers and women’s rights activists.
