TY - JOUR
T1 - A new look at gender inequality in Chinese
T2 - A study of Chinese speakers' perception of gender-based characters
AU - Cherng, Rong Ju
AU - Chang, Chu Lin
AU - Chen, Jenn Yeu
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments The work reported here was supported by the NSC-96-2752-H-006-001-PAE grant awarded to Jenn-Yeu Chen by the National Science Council of Taiwan, the Republic of China. We are indebted to the reviewers and the editor for many useful suggestions for revising the paper.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - It has been claimed that Chinese characters containing a woman radical (e.g., jian1 'adultery') tend to reflect negatively on women. We investigated this claim by asking Taiwan college students (24 men and 19 women) to rate the valence (1, 0, or -1) of 323 gender-based characters and their dictionary definitions. For men and women alike, characters with the son radical (k = 22) were rated more positively than characters with the woman radical (k = 103), although the latter also received a positive rating. Characters with the human radical (k = 198) were neutral. We conclude that gender inequality does not find itself in the gender-based characters. Whether it may be observed in other linguistic expressions of Chinese needs to be addressed with care.
AB - It has been claimed that Chinese characters containing a woman radical (e.g., jian1 'adultery') tend to reflect negatively on women. We investigated this claim by asking Taiwan college students (24 men and 19 women) to rate the valence (1, 0, or -1) of 323 gender-based characters and their dictionary definitions. For men and women alike, characters with the son radical (k = 22) were rated more positively than characters with the woman radical (k = 103), although the latter also received a positive rating. Characters with the human radical (k = 198) were neutral. We conclude that gender inequality does not find itself in the gender-based characters. Whether it may be observed in other linguistic expressions of Chinese needs to be addressed with care.
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U2 - 10.1007/s11199-009-9639-z
DO - 10.1007/s11199-009-9639-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:70449434542
SN - 0360-0025
VL - 61
SP - 427
EP - 433
JO - Sex Roles
JF - Sex Roles
IS - 5-6
ER -
