School for ‘submissive women’ shut down in China

Chinese authorities have shut down a school teaching women to be submissive to men, after videos of its lectures went viral on social media.

The Fushun School of Traditional Culture in the north-eastern Liaoning province offered “women’s virtue” courses, where students were told to “talk less, do more housework and shut their mouths”.

Video footage of one of the classes showing women weeping, kneeling and apologising for “wrongful deeds” sparked outrage on Chinese social media last week, the South China Morning Post reports.

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“This is female slavery, not female morality,” wrote one user of the Twitter-like Weibo platform.

Women were chastised for wearing make-up or having career ambitions, according to local reports, and were told not fight back when beaten or disobey their fathers, husbands and sons.

A 47-year-old woman who attended the school said she was “treated even worse than a prisoner”.

She said the lecturers “instil the idea that men are superior to women and our teachers keep repeating that the most important task for a woman is to reproduce”.

After the footage emerged, the local education bureau in Fushun said the institute’s teachings “went against social morality and must be closed immediately”, the BBC reports.

According to a recent report by World Economic Forum, China ranks 100th out of 144 countries for gender equality.

The country’s constitution guarantees equal rights between men and women, and Chinese law prohibits gender discrimination, but these laws “are rarely enforced”, Human Rights Watch said last month.