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What women want?

By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-03-27 09:39

What makes a woman happy? Power, money, love, sex?

In fact, self-fulfillment ranks the highest, for more than 60 percent of
the respondents in a recent survey.

The survey was conducted by the Yueji.Self, a Chinese-language magazine
jointly launched this month by the Chinese-language Women of China
magazine and the New York-based magazine publisher Conde Nast
Publications.

"The high marks for self -fulfillment are inspiring and encouraging," Li
Yinhe, a noted sexologist and professor at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, said.

"It shows big progress. More and more women want to achieve their life
value, which eclipses the importance of the private life for women.

"When women start to value self fulfillment, they become more equal to
men."

In China, the traditional mindset is that men live for their careers and
women live for love.

Although only about 22.5 percent surveyed prioritized love as the big
happiness maker, it doesn't mean that Chinese women no longer believe in
love, Li said.

However, it demonstrated that love was no longer the most important
factor for a woman to be happy in China. This is perhaps reflected in the
growing trend that many Chinese women are opting to remain single.

While the dependence on love for happiness has dampened, according to the
survey, so has sex.

Only about 2.2 percent of Chinese women consider sex the most valuable
factor to a happy woman.

The reason, Li said, was that the word was stereotyped with negative
meanings.

"A good woman should not like sex," she said.

"Love is a beautiful word. But power, money and sex all represent the
negative things."

So it is understandable when only 0.6 percent of women chose power, the
lowest among all options, the survey showed.

"The awareness and recognition of women's empowerment are relatively low
in China," Li said. "The country has long been a patriarchial society and
still is, offering less opportunities and encouragement to women to
compete with men."

"Despite the progress made in gender equality and women empowerment in
recent years, only 20 percent of the National People's Congress (NPC)
members are females," Li said.

The survey is also the first of its kind to be carried out in 15 cities
on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan province.

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