I have recently been given a car from my dad to drive around. It is a car 10 years old and it has done 150k miles/240k kilometers but still in surprisingly good condition thanks to my dad having done good maintenance on it.

But as I drive around, I can’t help but notice how other cars on the road react to me. I felt like I was being bullied while I drive, cars would cut me without warning, beep me for seemingly no reason, all while I have been driving perfectly in my lane, following the speed limits and using my indicators properly. I have my full license already so I do not have the ‘probationary period’ badge on my car. All of these can be explained by the simple fact that I am in China, a country not exactly known for having good drivers, the reasons of which this article tries to identify (Note: it has nothing to do with race or culture).

Or it could be I am a female driver.

Female drivers are usually seen as worse drivers, globally. A simple search on Google confirms this bias (Google is blocked in China so I am using an anti-censorship software to bypass the block). At least 60% more results show up when the gender is swapped in the search term.

Sexism against females are rampant in China. In the case of female drivers, the sexism is displayed in plain daylight. Beijing Police (capital of China) once published a post titled “Female drivers, please pay attention and avoid driving mistakes” which the BBC reported on.

“Some female drivers lack a sense of direction and are often hesitant as to which roads to take.”

“This is particularly so when [they] drive on roads such as elevated bridges. They often can’t find the entrance or the exit. They can’t remember how to find places which they have been to several times.”

The post has been criticized as sexist, but this is far from the only display of sexism towards female drivers in China. The Straight Times (newspaper based in Singapore) reported on ‘female only parking spaces’ marked with stiletto on pink background and happens to be larger than other parking spaces because ‘haha female drivers bad’. Many Chinese social media users also railed against female drivers after bus plunges into the river, which was caused by a collision with a car, driven by a woman. SCMP (newspaper based in Hong Kong) reported on the sexism that surfaced after this incident, including comments on Chinese social media such as ‘The traffic management authorities should just ban women from driving’.

In Shenzhen, ‘Priority carriages for women’ is available on all lines of subway. It claims to help women avoid being harassed by males on the subway, but this is not a solution for sexual harassment and instead a move that can potentially turn into victim blaming because ‘you should have stayed in your carriages or expect to be harassed’, similar to how people blame rape victims for wearing the clothes they wore at the time instead of the person actually at fault, the rapist.

Job advertisements frequently displays sexism according to a SCMP article, ‘Looking for a pretty female, must be taller than 1.70 meters, with fine features’, these type of job advertisements are considered illegal according to Chinese law but the authorities are not bothered to actually enforce it. In some areas of the country, women are not even allowed to eat on the main dining table, not to mention the countless girls that are not even allowed to ever live, because the parents chose to abort them as soon as they found out they will be having a daughter instead of a son. The practice of finding out the sex of the baby before birth is strictly prohibited by law in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, but just as in job advertisements, this is often unenforced. This practice of female infanticide is exposed by documentary films such as It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World.

As I was growing up, I constantly heard remarks like ‘Girls perform better than boys before the third grade (in primary school) only, they lack the energy to keep them going far’, and as I aged that magical time when girls will suddenly not have the energy to keep going gets replaced for no apparent reason, once it was ‘after primary school’, then it became ‘after middle school’, and then ‘in high school’, ‘in college’, ‘in jobs’…

I went a couple weeks ago to a computer repair store to fix my MacBook, I heard the remark of ‘Girls are better than boys nowadays, many boys won’t even be able to dismantle this computer to find out where the problem is and girls like you can do it’, as I explained to the shop technician what I thought the problem was. His words recognized my worth, but that is still troublesome because my worth was recognized based on being myself, but established by my comparison to the benchmark, a man.

I wish for a day that I would no longer hear those words.

I wish for a day when my first action when I get into the car is not locking the door immediately before even putting down my bag, for my own safety, something my mom taught me and something my dad never had to worry about.

I wish for a day when menstruation is not a taboo topic.

I wish for a day when people are no longer discriminated or stereotyped against because of their gender.

I wish for a day when I can say I am female without others perceiving me as a less-than-whole person in this country.

But until that day comes, many Chinese women’s wish list includes ‘not being born female’, which is something I have even heard from the person who gave me birth.

P.S. I started writing this after being sick of sexism I see and experience in China as female, and the last straw was Zhihu (Chinese equivalent of Quora, which is blocked) sent me a notification, recommending me to read a sexist answer to the question ‘Why do people say women are bad drivers’, answers to which is basically entirely sexist, one-sided and extremely biased view. I know this an incomplete experience of being female in China, or experienced by Chinese women, I can only write so much at this point in time and I only have what I know and have experienced as reference, but I might come back to this topic in the future.

《出走的决心》，8/10

看片一向不及时的我，最近才终于看了《出走的决心》。两周前的大年夜，电影的原型，苏敏阿姨官宣离婚。我原以为，在这个消息的鼓舞下，电影会看得更心旷神怡一些。但，仍然看的很憋气。尤其是一些家务的场景，联想到之前《好东西》里，被大家盛赞的那段，妈妈家务劳动时的各种音效。对比之下，是不一样的感受。

电影最触动我的一个镜头，是阿姨刚买了户外帐篷，在屋里支起来的时候。作为住过上千次帐篷的人，也很多次在屋里给别人搭起，当作有趣的行为或景致。然而，看到电影里的画面，才第一次意识到，原来这个场景，在意象上，可以成为「一间只属于女性自己的房间」。

憋气的场景看多了（这里感谢姜武的爹味演绎^^），以至于会觉得，这算不算是电影不足的地方？——电影把生活环境描写得过于极端了，很多典型的生活困境，和典型的油腻男气息，都集中在一起。在我的想象里，这会让一些观影的人，因为自己并没有这么惨，而为自己找一些不出走的理由？譬如，很多家里老公会做饭，会给老婆打伞，多数家庭至少言语和睦，偶尔也能一起出去旅行，躺在床上刷手机的当然也不止是老公，女人也很多……于是，人们把电影和自己的现实一对比，哦，原来我没有那么惨，所以我没有出走，也是 ok 的。

但是，当我和别人说起这个想法时，发现对方的回应是：她老公已经算不错了，没有酗酒、家暴、吸毒、赌博、传销、网贷……虽然我觉得对方大概也是在开玩笑嘲讽，但每个人的认知底线也确实不同吧。我确实不擅长去想象别人的边界感。

现实中，我也会给身边困住庸碌生活中的人，家人、朋友、爱人，提供安慰，或者带他们玩各种有趣的东西。——这当然不是为了让他们更好地做牛做马；但是这些行为，会不会也为他们的各种意义上的「不出走」，加了一把力呢？我不知道。回想起来，很多次我带他们体验有趣事物的时候，真的在以一种希冀的目光看着他们, 希望他们突然说出, 不, 这样不够, 我还要更嗨。

然而并没有。

然后我发现就这么看电影时把自己看哭了。然后开始反思，我确实容易陷入这种「沉默的羔羊」式的自我感动，从起初想要不顾一切带着羊离开，到后来淡然着，看着羊们一次次地，偶尔露出些不清晰的对离开的憧憬，但很快又缩回去。——也可以理解成，被无形的文化之手抓了回去。而我对自己的淡然状态，是否应该又罪恶感呢？是否只是在享受廉价的自我感动呢？仍然不清楚。

As the world exits the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more companies are pushing for workers to “Return to Office”. Many are also expecting full-time in-person work and dismisses remote work (or Work From Home, a problematic term that I will expand upon later) as “not real work”. There have even been instances where companies that once promised remote work will be implemented permanently turning its back on workers that have structured their life accordingly and forcing them to come back to the office instead. This is done even in companies that according to their own statistics that remote work is more productive.

Opponents of remote work often use the term “WFH”, or Work from Home to describe remote work, and it is often described as a perk. They often believe that working from the office is the only way to do real work.

This is a clear case of the Principal-Agent problem. The managers of the company are supposed to be working for the benefits of the shareholders and maximizing the profit potential. Instead, managers fall to their personal crave for the sense of control. I know someone that manages his team from Toronto that he forces to go into the New York office everyday. After all, how can they know you are doing real work unless they get to force you to commute 2 hours each way? Knowing that someone was forced to lose sleep, gain anxiety, be more stressed, is simply an irreplaceable joy that remote work can never offer. #slam_dunk_argument

Even if we ignore the Principal-Agent problem and pretend there is no personal motivation for the managers making such a decision, and it was purely made for the benefits of the business, it makes no sense.

Companies usually pay their workers something called a salary, along with possibility other perks. All of these compensation have a singular purpose, make the employee happy enough to keep doing the job. If a company can pay someone $5k a month to do the job, chances are they won’t find someone at $10k a month if they deliver the same quality of products. It is the same theme as the Murphy’s law of combat, “Remember, your weapons are made by the lowest bidder”. Considering this, allowing workers more freedom in deciding where they want to live would be an obvious way of improving their happiness. A happier worker = A more productive worker, so a manager who is forcing their team to go into a shoebox office is engaged in active sabotage against the company interest.

The auto plants of Detroit shutdown because of cheaper costs of producing in Japan. Outsourcing labor is just one of the many ways of remote work, but somehow with the advent of new technology that allows for a programmer to code from anywhere in the world, they are somehow not doing “real work” unless they go to a desk that has the same Wi-Fi connection as any other Starbucks?

As a woman, the traditional office environment can often be actively hostile. From the increased potential of physical sexual assault due literally being in the same physical location, to the air-con temperature that is often too cold for women’s comfort, it is simply a space that is not friendly, and therefore reduces the productivity. Many woman are also expected to bear household chores, and there are way more stay-at-home moms compared to dads. The inability to participate in the working world from your kitchen counter has been a huge career barrier for many women.

The gender pay gap exists for a reason, prejudice. However, I argue the solution is simple, let capitalism take over. If a woman’s work quality is the same as their male counterpart, fire the guy and hire another woman. Gender pay gap exists? Good! Exploit it!

Societal attitudes towards work changes depending on the era. When computer programming first started, newspapers pushed that women are more suited to do the job, then thought as mere clerical work, because women are more “careful”. It was only after men realized the job was important that the prejudice against female coders started and programming became a male dominated domain. This shows that societal attitudes towards work and its relationship with gender has nothing to do with objective reality.

Different societies also have different attitudes towards work. In this video, the Japanese salaried worker spends most of his days travelling across Tokyo to meet with clients face to face to resolve matters that can often be done on the phone, because Japanese culture believes face-to-face meetings to be more “polite”. He also arrived at the office 40 mins before the official start time and had work even after arriving at home after 8 pm. Japan is not known for creating the biggest startups, perhaps for a reason. After all, how much brain space do you really have for creativity after such a long day?

Japanese work culture is also known to be very prejudiced against women, who often have no real path towards career success and are often expected to marry, baby, and quit. How far can an economy go that ignores half of its highly educated population?

By not opening jobs that can done remotely to remote workers, a company ignores the entire global population, apart from wherever they happen to have an office at. Remote work is not “Work from Home”, which usually leads to the logical fallacy of “You are at home for the entire day, therefore you are not working, therefore WFH is not working, therefore remote work does not work”. Remote work is just work in a different environment, one that can be adjusted to fit the individual needs much better than a standardized office environment, one that boosts productivity, and eventually revenue.

Ignoring women means ignoring 50% of the potential talent pool, mandating in-person work means ignoring 99.99% of the potential talent pool. Remote work is simply, work. An employee of any gender is simply, an employee.

Soviet Union is dead, but capitalism has been defeated.

All hail prejudice.