“She uses men to boost her career”: Chinese digital cultures and gender stereotypes of female academics in Zhihu discourses

Abstract

Portrayed by the media as the story of "how a female PhD juggles intimate relationship with four male PhD academics", the LM incident, named after the female main character of the story, was a high-profile case, which provoked public debates on Chinese social media in 2019. In this article, we explore how the stereotyping of female PhDs plays out in Chinese Internet users' discussions about the LM incident. We collected a total of 632 relevant posts from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site -Zhihu and analysed them by drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA). The research findings reveal how a sexualised portrayal of female PhDs, which is dramatically "different" from the traditional, asexual stereotypes of well-educated women, is established in Zhihu users' postings. Many Zhihu users, including both women and men, mobilise an overwhelmingly sexualised portrayal of female PhDs, which speaks to the normalisation of patriarchal discourses in the status quo of Chinese academia and beyond. The research findings shed light on post-socialist gender politics, which facilitates the perpetuation of gender essentialism in China in the post-reform era.

Gender Essentialism in Chinese Reality TV: A Case Study of You Are So Beautiful

“…This turns female PhD holders into a “peculiar” subtype of women in the eyes of the general public. In accordance with the portrayal of female PhD holders as nerds in Western popular cultures, this cohort of well-educated women is often designated as the third gender (第三性) in the Chinese language (Peng et al 2021). This lexical choice describes female PhD holders as individuals, neither women nor men, who are often “unmarried, cold-blooded, pitiless, tough, and aggressive” despite possessing “unusual intelligence” (Xu et al 2017, 562).…”

“…This lexical choice describes female PhD holders as individuals, neither women nor men, who are often “unmarried, cold-blooded, pitiless, tough, and aggressive” despite possessing “unusual intelligence” (Xu et al 2017, 562). It mocks the undesirability of female PhD holders in the marriage market, representing a socially constituted penalization of well-educated women because their “excessive” accomplishments in a masculine field pose threats to the male dominance of China’s socio-economic structures (Peng et al 2021). Exploiting this third-gender stereotype, this episode indeed endorses such an indigenous, chauvinist logic to restrict women’s agency to challenge the patriarchal fabric of society.…”

The Alienation of Women’s Discourse on Chinese Social Media

“…On the other hand, influenced by patriarchal ideology, some women post personal content to cater to men's standards (e.g., physical appearances, emotional needs) subconsciously. In addition, some women tend to use personal-journey rhetoric citing a biased personal experience to justify gendered notions, which forms a consistent pattern that exploits the sexualized portrayal of female images and endorses the long-existing prejudice against unconventional women (Peng & Hou & KhosraviNik & Zhang, 2021). In this sense, women's discourse fails to help confirm their female identity but falls into the trap of men's discourse.…”

Impacts of information asymmetry on users' payment rates: evidence from trading data of Chinese knowledge payment platform

“…After building the theoretical framework, we perform our empirical analysis based on 18,489 trading data collected from China's largest knowledge payment platform Zhihu. Like Quora, Zhihu is a unique social media platform that allows Internet users to answer questions from their peers on the site (Peng et al, 2023). Zhang pointed out that over 80% of Zhihu users are university students or professionals with bachelor's degrees or above (Zhang, 2020).…”