FEMALE PROTESTERS UPEND GENDER ROLES IN HONG KONG
During the Occupy protests in 2014, Aria listened to Lady Gaga, put on makeup and wore cute outfits, embracing the ubiquitous “Goddess of Democracy” moniker at a time when online polls asked whether Hong Kong’s few female leaders were wife or girlfriend material.
Over months of recent pro-democracy demonstrations, however, the 25-year-old Hong Konger marched to the front lines cloaked in black with her hair tucked into a helmet while wielding a wrench and a Swiss Army knife. She regularly joined a team of 30 people for physical training drills, and listens to aggressive Cantonese rapcore music.
In 2014, Aria said, women like her came out in force but were relegated to cheerleader-like support roles, such as giving out water and food. The movement failed to achieve its major goal — universal suffrage — teaching her that pro-democracy activists must take drastic action to be heard, and that women need a larger role.
“This is very different from the past — the mentality has totally changed,” said Aria, who declined to give her last name because she fears getting arrested. “Now women have gone the extra mile to go to the front of the protests, regardless of consequences.”
While Aria says the current protests have ebbed in recent weeks due to the spread of the coronavirus, they are far from over. She is among many female activists in Hong Kong now taking centre stage, both on the streets and in organising unions — including hospital workers who went on strike this month to press for stricter measures to stop the virus.
While women number about half of all protesters in Hong Kong — similar to 2014 — police say they account for a third of the 7,000 arrests related to the demonstrations.
A similar trend can be found elsewhere in the world. From Sudan’s uprising against former president Omar al-Bashir to India’s campaign to block a controversial citizenship bill, women are at the forefront of a global protest wave, said Marie Berry, who studies the issue at the University of Denver.
“There’s a growing recognition that we are no longer gaining rights or liberties, and it’s something we have to actively fight for,” Berry said.
The actions of Hong Kong’s women on the streets are having an impact in elections as well. Women claimed a fifth of 452 seats as pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory in the District Council elections in November, up slightly from the last vote in 2015.
Edith Leung, one of the winners, said the protests have smashed female stereotypes. She highlighted derogatory posts on the popular online message board LIHKG, which used to call women “Kong girls”, slang for self-centred princesses. Now, she said, women are called sau zuk, or comrade.
As the protests unfolded, “making fun of women vanished because netizens know that this time, women have sacrificed so much”, said Leung, who got five stitches in her head after police hit her with a baton at a November protest.
Women also figure prominently in artwork that has defined the Hong Kong protests, including a medic who became an icon for the movement after losing an eye from a beanbag round in August. Leung said these images, including a video of a police attack on her, have changed stereotypes of Hong Kong women.
Activists are now turning their attention to the September elections for the 70-person Legislative Council, which has never had more than 12 female members. Just more than half the council is elected by popular vote, with remaining seats selected by professional constituencies that tend to favour men.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam, as well as eight out of the 11 women currently on the legislative council, are in the pro-Beijing camp.
Emily Lau, the first woman directly elected to the Legislative Council in 1991, said the fact that 40% of the 220 female candidates who ran for District Council seats were victorious suggests the biggest hurdle facing women is failing to run in the first place.
Yet not everyone sees the development of women embracing more aggressive tactics as positive. Hong Kong University gender studies professor Petula Ho, who tracked female activists during and after the 2014 Umbrella protests, said she received death threats and online attacks — many of which focused on her gender and appearance — after openly questioning the use of violence this time around.
The current protest movement lionises violent activists who display “traditional male qualities of aggression, which devalues other forms of participation and makes women conform to patriarchal norms”, Ho said.
She also criticised the movement for drawing support from other initiatives that would benefit women. For example, she pointed to a bill to extend the city’s statutory maternity leave by four weeks, which was held up in the Legislative Council after pro-democracy lawmakers tried to stop pro-Beijing lawmakers from bypassing committee hearings.
The pro-democracy camp argues that the move could set a precedent to fasttrack more contentious legislation.
“The excuse is, let’s wait until after the revolution, otherwise you’ll distract people,” Ho said. “But if we truly want to build a democracy in Hong Kong in the future, it should include gender equity.”
Besides arrest and jail time, female protesters also face added risks of sexual assault. A survey by nonprofit Association Concerning Sexual Violence Against Women found 67 cases of sexual violence by police, as well as fellow protesters. But only a handful were reported to authorities in part due to fears of getting arrested for other offences.
In response to emailed questions, Hong Kong police said they didn’t comment on individual cases while urging anyone who was violated during detention to file complaints.
Aria said fighting on the front lines of the protests has made her more confident. Still, as she stared at the tabby cat scampering across the cramped apartment she shared with her parents and brother, she struggled to envision the future despite saying she’d continue her fight for democracy.
“I used to think of being an artist, or of being someone’s wife, or mom,” she said. “Now all of this seems very far away.”
“If we truly want to build a democracy in Hong Kong in the future, it should include gender equity” PETULA HO Activist and academic