Women's Day, 2006

This holiday is a pretty big deal, here. My students tell me to be sure to go shopping, that there will be good sales. Just like home, I think. Holiday equals marketing frenzy.

Our faculty celebration was co-ed, a predictable but no less pleasant hot-pot dinner punctuated by toast after toast.

The young teachers, all in their early twenties, are always good company. I've gotten to know a few of them well. The young women fascinate me, and the fragility of their futures keeps me awake at night, sometimes.

I came of age in the 1960's, a time of dramatic change in the status of women in the U.S. and elsewhere. I remember negotiating some conflict among expectations -- of my family, of my academic mentors, of myself. But I do not remember ever feeling fearful that the past would be a millstone around my neck, keeping me from achieving whatever I chose to attempt.

The status of women in China is changing, but not fast enough for some of the bright, ambitious young women I know. Consider Leah: her boyfriend belittles her publicly, over her objections. (Yes, she could dump him, but a girl who has had more than one boyfriend is considered, well . . . shopworn.) Consider Linda: her father is in the process of deciding whether to choose a husband for her or send her abroad for graduate study. She has no say in the decision. (Yes, she could revolt, but it would mean permanent estrangement from her family.) Consider Lyn: her boyfriend's mother stopped by recently to pressure her to fast-track the wedding. Lyn would rather concentrate on her career right now. "Once I marry," she says, "I must have a baby. If that one is a girl, I will be forced to have another." The expression on her beautiful, intelligent face is a mix of distaste and despair.

Demographics are on their side. Fallout from the one-child policy, women of marriage age are in short supply. Yet this reality isn't translating into bargaining power for my friends. They are educated and socialized for the twenty-first century, but shackled by social traditions that are centuries old. I pray for them every day.