One day recently an anonymous caller sobbed hysterically that her husband had repeatedly beaten her, at one time breaking her collarbone. In Mao's time women not only won wholesale opportunities in education and jobs, they also gained such dignity of independence overall that most husbands pitched in with the housework. Of course, Mao's regime was also a purgatory for scores of millions of Chinese who fell victim to the class struggle, misbegotten economic schemes, mass political purges and show trials. But on the home front the leveling of status between mates led two generations of women to assume that their gains were permanent. At the same time, many Chinese women, newly aware of what their counterparts in the West expect from marriage and sex, have soured on customary homelife, in which men pay consuming attention to their sons.
Divorce is on the upswing, and so is wife beating.
Women's advocates believe wife beating is much more widespread than studies suggest. Chen Yiyun, the Jinglun Family Center chief, is a case study. Her grandmother had bound feet and a bottomless fund of woeful tales. Her mother was a housewife for 30 years before the communists took over and decreed that women could work outside the home. She graduated from Peking University, landed a job, married and received the same salary as her husband, who stayed behind to take care of the family when Chen went off to Canada in 1980 for studies in political science.