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Recent headlines about the sexual and social discrimination the women in China have had to face were jarring. In July this year, five local officials in China's southwest Province Guizhou were jailed for forcing underage rural girls into the sex trade; the fact that the men were initially charged with "having sex with underage prostitutes" added to the public outrage. Then there was the case of the two schoolgirls accused by police in the southern city of Kunming of working as prostitutes-even after hospital tests proved they were both still virgins. Or the one in May, when Deng Yujiao drew national attention after she was arrested for stabbing to death a local government official who she said had tried to rape her. Plans to charge the 21-year-old waitress with murder provoked a huge outcry in the media and online, leading to a rare government retreat: rather than murder, Deng was convicted of using excessive force in self-defense and then released (on grounds of diminished responsibility).
 These incidents have struck a powerful chord among ordinary citizens because of what they reveal about the status of women in China. While Beijing has officially promoted gender equality ever since Chairman Mao proclaimed that women "hold up half the sky," implementation of this ideal has proved patchy. Many Chinese women especially the wealthy elites-do enjoy good education, work for multinationals, and own their own homes, but millions of their sisters, especially among the poor, have yet to see much change.
Perhaps the starkest example is the boom in the sex trade. Eventhough the government abolished prostitution in the 1950s and worked to rehabilitate former escorts, yet today massage parlors, hair salons, and other venues offering sex for money have become ubiquitous, and some estimates put the number of prostitutes in China at 4 million.
Reports of on-the-job discrimination have also become commonplace where resistance to hiring women of childbearing age has become widespread. Personal quality still matters, but the less-competitive females face more difficulties. The situation is particularly bad at the millions of small private businesses.
While there are some signs of progress – 50 percent of university or college students in China today are women, up from 23 percent in 1980 – the gaps are still huge. The nation's leading headhunter, Chinahr.com, reported in 2007 that the average salary for white-collar men was 44,000 yuan ($6,441), compared with 28,700 yuan ($4,201) for women.
These practices are also reflected in China's political sector: despite a few success stories, women make up around 20 percent of the Communist Party's 70 million members and hold only 13 of 204 seats in the Central Committee, the party's top body.
Biases are also reinforced by policies like the one that allows rural families to have a second child if their first is a girl (on the assumption that daughters are less useful to poor farmers).
In recent years, the government has attempted to tackle the gender problem. Last year, for example, it launched a high-profile campaign against domestic violence, and in 2005 it introduced new laws against sexual harassment, though the definition remains vague.
Perhaps more significantly, some Chinese citizens are taking matters into their own hands. In a number of big cities, women-run non governmental organisations now provide training and information to migrants to help them avoid falling into the trap of prostitution. The Internet has also helped Chinese women to organise. Internet activism has been particularly noticeable in recent months where the bloggers through their blog posts were able to generate much of the publicity surrounding the case of the Kunming schoolgirls or the truth about Deng Yujiao, the waitress who stabbed a Hubei official to death, was revealed only after a blogger posted her photos online that helped spark public outrage.
However, activists complain that it's still more or less taboo to describe oneself as a feminist in China. And many successful urban women seem to feel little solidarity with their rural counterparts. However, the recent scandals and the big public reaction to them may mark a turning point in the country. 
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