By Charlotte Vangsgaard

The Chinese film “Tiny Times,” based on a young adult book targeting middle school and high school-aged girls, presents a quartet of young women in Shanghai who let career aspirations fall by the wayside in pursuit of material wealth and beautiful young men. It was one of many Chinese blockbusters aimed at the burgeoning youth audience this year and, earning close to a half billion renminbi ($82 million), it easily beat out many Western blockbusters competing for youth dollars.

Although the film is clearly derivative of two iconic American hits, Sex and the City, and The Devil Wears Prada, and it trades in the same kind of aspirational consumerism that was so prevalent in the West in the late nineties, “Tiny Times,” and the heated dialogue it is generating, is distinctly Chinese. Pitting the Communist and post-Communist intellectual class, who argue that the film exemplifies a cultural wasteland, against a fiercely independent consumer class of post-90s and ’00s youth, the film has become emblematic of the culture clash of values occurring across urban China.

In The Atlantic’s recent review of the film, Dr. Ying Zhu and Frances Hisgen argue that the movie’s presentation of feminism indicates a step backward for this latest generation of women. The authors use the review to make a more general claim about modern Chinese society: That China’s recent economic boom has widened the gender gap and revived oppressive views on women. They write:

Years of accelerating economic growth have brought unprecedented social and geographic mobility, and increased pressure on Chinese men to succeed, to follow the trail of power and money, leaving their women behind. Economic growth has exacerbated the gender gap, often reviving cultural traditions that reduce women to a sub-human status.

This portrayal of the women as losing ground in economic participation does not reflect the widespread reality. According to Shaun Rein, director of China Market Research Group, Chinese women comprise 50% of total household income. The Economist reported in 2011 that the labor force participation rate is higher for women in China than in any other country in the world. Moreover, 25% of senior management positions in China are held by women, in contrast to 18% in the US, 24% in Europe and a mere 5% in neighboring Japan. Of course, 25% is a far cry from 50%, and much remains to be done in the achievement of gender parity. But these and other statistics indicate that the gender gap in China isn’t as wide as the movie, and the article, might lead us to believe.

Read the full article on Quartz here.

[Banner image by Michelle Ding via Unsplash]