Holding Up Half the Sky
Chinese women play important roles in various arenas
Women have made unprecedented historical achievements, demonstrating that they can hold up half the sky, said Vice Premier Sun Chunlan at the closing ceremony of the 12th National Women’s Congress held in Beijing from October 30 to November 2.
As part of the contributors to the current e-commerce boom in China, for example, women comprise 55 percent of e-business owners, according to the AllChina Women’s Federation.
Official statistics show that women made up 43.1 percent of China’s workforce in 2016, 51.9 percent of central government civil servants in 2015, and approximately a quarter of all entrepreneurs in the country in 2015.
Sun emphasized the formulation and implementation of policies promoting gender equality, with a focus on tackling employment discrimination and improving education and public health services for women, so as to create conditions for them to devote themselves to innovation and entrepreneurship and play a unique role in society.
Lin Yan is a senior engineer of psychological testing and document inspection at the technical division of the Public Security Bureau in Qingdao City, east China’s Shandong Province. Over more than 10 years, as a lie-detecting expert, she has tested more than 1,280 suspects, directly leading to the cracking of 265 cases, according to the All-women’s Federation of Shandong.
More than simply administering lie detector tests, Lin carefully observes the minutest details in suspects’ body language, meticulously carries out multichannel testing and validation and conducts comprehensive analysis.
Inspired by a detective movie, she has developed computer software to capture pupil movements, facial expressions, semantic variations and other signs, filling a vacuum in the lie detection field in China.
Lin has creatively introduced the threedimensional street scene map into lie detection. She once successfully located material evidence in a murder case by monitoring the reaction of the suspect while he watched the street scene. The suspect was confirmed to have disposed of the evidence in a ditch 20 km away from the crime scene. Her work led to the settling of the three-year-old cold case.
Lin grew up in a family that believed there was nothing a girl couldn’t do. Her father is a police officer and her mother is an independent woman who supports police work and taught her children to be independent as well.
In 1996, Lin became a police officer and as she continued to learn new skills on the job, she honed her lie-detecting expertise. Because of her outstanding performance, she was elected as a deputy to the women’s congress this year.
Speaking up for children
Zhen Lanfang, 47, has been to Beijing three times. Once for sightseeing, the second on a business trip, and the third as a deputy to the National People’s Congress (NPC) in March this year and the principal of the Central Primary School of Wenping Town in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
The current NPC has 742 women deputies, accounting for 24.9 percent of the total, the highest proportion in the congress’ history, according to official statistics. Zhen started teaching in a primary school in Yunnan after graduating in 1991. She was promoted to principal of the Central Primary School in 2017, managing more than 3,000 students and more than 300 teachers and staff members. Zhen said that in order to improve her management abilities, she has done a lot of reading and overcome many difficulties.
She was honored to have been elected to the NPC. “The people elected me as a deputy, so I should represent the people,” she said, adding that she will do her best to perform her duties and bring children’s voices to Beijing.
Zhen said she is gratified with the improvement in the educational conditions in rural schools. With government support, seven schools in her town have added new buildings, libraries, laboratories and rooms for music, sports and fine art classes.
She thinks more work needs to be done to improve rural education. Realizing that at present rural schools are short of teachers, she suggested that the recruitment of teachers in the compulsory education stage be accelerated, that teachers be allocated rationally and trained better, and that