The Decline of the Chauvinistic Model of Chinese Masculinity: A Research Report

Abstract

Our study is the first study to explore the transformation of Chinese gender stereotypes over a thirty-year period. Based on the field research conducted in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, and supplemental data in Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing, we examine the way men and women's supposed "essence" has been objectified in folk ideology to form a cognitive or ideal model of gender. We argue that there is a decline in the 1980s chauvinistic model of masculinity that centered around a simplistic dichotomy of wén (scholarly)/w¢ u (oriented toward bold action); whereby masculinity is associated with a presumption of superiority and contempt toward women to a newer form of masculinity organized around a blend of wén and w¢ u cultural traits that highlight confidence, decisiveness, politeness, and a cool demeanor, along with a heightened respect for females.Gender images and role expectations vary from culture to culture. This is often true even where behavioral similarities across cultures persist in regard to gender-related behaviors of males and females. In Imperial China, studies exploring the significance of gender have noted that there was no word for masculinity or femininity in that era. The absence of a linguistic term that identifies gender as a social configuration has led some to infer that kinship in Imperial China was more essential than gender (Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002). Rather than being bounded by availability of linguistic labels, we argue that there are interesting and important aspects of male/ female subjective experiences, behaviors, and interactions (Jankowiak 1999(Jankowiak , 2002(Jankowiak , 2006, as it is one thing to assert that not every culture has labels in everyday language for folk ideology of masculinity and femininity and quite another to conclude that there are no recurrent sex-linked patterns of behavior.After the fall of the Qing empire, many sex-linked behaviors continue to cluster around specific orientations toward the erotic (Buss 2007;Symons 1979),

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