New outlets of digital feminist activism in China: the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign

ABSTRACT

This article examines the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign in China, which has been one of the most influential digital feminist movements in recent years despite the patriarchal and repressive political environment in the country. The campaign not only achieved its initial goal of raising the media visibility of female health workers fighting the pandemic, but also drew public attention to the unseen contributions of female workers in all walks of life. By analysing the narrative themes and frequency of the randomly selected original posts, this study identified thematic categories to conceptualise themes of participation. Subsequently, we suggest that the intersectional nature of the campaign was an important factor in its success as it enabled women from different backgrounds to come together and discuss discrimination in the workplace. We also found that the campaign managed to evade misogynistic antagonism by avoiding polarising labels. Finally, we suggest that the reuse of socially established hashtags can be beneficial for conducting follow-up activities and sustaining the influence of the original campaign. However, the study also highlights the potential risks posed by censorship and surveillance in China, which can hinder the development and success of digital feminist activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital feminist activism
• #seefemaleworkers
• social media
• hashtag feminism
• China

Feminist activist movements such as #BeenRapedNeverReported and #MeToo have demonstrated that digital activism could foster feminist solidarity, awareness and social change (Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose and Jessalynn Keller 2018). Despite many drawbacks such as stigma, pervasive misogyny, platform precariousness (Sarah Banet-Weiser 2018; Lixian Hou 2020), social media is still considered a relatively safe and accessible space for feminist discourse. In China, despite the authoritarian rule with a sophisticated censor apparatus used against feminist expressions (Yingjiang Liu and Yong Zheng 2019; Committee to Protect Journalists 2019), feminists have nonetheless found new tactics and outlets to resist (Guobin Yue Yang 2022) and create successful campaigns (Jing Xiong and Dušica Ristivojević 2021).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an influential digital feminist campaign using the hashtag #Standbyher (Chinese: #予她同行 #姐妹战疫安心行动) and later #SeeFemaleWorkers (Chinese: #看见女性劳动者), was successfully launched on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular Chinese micro-blogging platforms with a Twitter-like interface. According to the National Health Administration of China (2020), more than two-thirds of the total workforce of the Hubei Province Medical Team was female, contributing significant physical and emotional assistance throughout the pandemic. However, their primary physiological demand for hygiene products was not included in the governmental anti-pandemic material list, preventing them from accessing the fast-track logistics that meant a severe shortage of sanitary supplies (Yu Liang 2020). The scarcity was exacerbated by their quarantine in the hospitals, prohibitating them from buying sanitary goods. Yu Liang, a female activist, recognised the government’s neglect of female healthcare workers’ urgent needs and launched a charity social movement on Weibo to raise money towards hygiene products for them (Jiaqi Luo 2020). The campaign kicked off in February 2020, with the #StandByHer hashtag highlighting the menstrual needs of female healthcare workers. As the leading figure, Yu Liang led a 51-person activist group to coordinate the campaign and donations online and offline. They raised a total of 2,532,044.88 yuan, 613,305 sanitary pants, 320,883 disposable underpants, 160,776 pads and 10,852 hand cream by 22:00 on March 22 2020. These donated materials improved working conditions for 84,500 female healthcare workers at 205 hospitals and medical teams (Liang 2020; Jianxia Feng 2020, 38). #StandByHer campaign won central government acclaim and pushed the agenda to include hygiene products on the governmental anti-pandemic material list. Due to its exclusive focus on menstrual supplies for female workers, it also revolutionarily sparked a heated discussion regarding menstruation de-stigmatisation (Luo 2020; Yang 2022).

#StandByHer drew attention of news agencies and the Chinese central government to the neglected contribution of female medical personnel whereby male physicians dominated the news on social media entirely while female workers were hardly mentioned as subjects of news reports. Subsequently, another hashtag, #SeeFemaleWorkers took over the baton from #StandByHer, to defend the rights and increase the visibility of female healthcare workers. This hashtag, which gained huge momentum on Sina Weibo, quickly became a hub for discussing and exposing difficulties concerning female healthcare workers. Advocates continued to use this hashtag for fundraising and agenda-setting. By the time the first lockdown in Wuhan was eased in April 2020, #SeeFemaleWorkers had 520 million readings and 776,000 discussions (Feng 2020, 35–36). Owing to the discussions and appeal online, the central government started to recognise female medical workers’ contributions by having more female faces in news reports and award ceremonies.

As the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign shifted focus from the front-line female healthcare workers to other marginalised female groups, such as female soldiers, firefighters, engineers, couriers and drivers—the traditionally male-dominated occupations, where women’s contributions are concealed. #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign, therefore, highlighted women’s accomplishments and workplace discrimination. Criticisms of the male-centric narratives struck a chord among women, leading to the contentious debate over undervalued female labour in many fields. As more female workers revealed their workplace mistreatment and gender discrimination, #SeeFemaleWorkers ultimately became an icon for defending female workers’ rights in all sections of society and lasted more than two years. It constantly got consolidated and intensified, inspiring numerous feminist discussions and initiatives, eventually having a long-lasting pragmatic and discursive impact than the #StandByHer campaign. Considering the tightly regulated communication systems of China, such massive feminist activism online is not a common occurrence (also see Qiqi Huang 2022). These impressive results not only far exceeded the campaign’s initial expectations, but also made feminist concerns apparent, especially after President Xi took over (Ping Lu 2019). Compared to the #StandByHer campaign, which focused more on raising money and materials to solve the practical issues faced by female healthcare workers, #SeeFemaleWorkers showed exclusive potential in storytelling and discourse re-construction, which is worth in-depth and nuanced interrogation to understand why this particular case of “hashtag feminism” has ended up being empowering as it is not always the case (see Gina Masullo Chen, Paromita Pain and Briana Barner 2018).

In this article, therefore, we examine several key factors that made the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign successful. First, we explore the main discussion topics and how they have become broadly relevant to society at large. Secondly, we analyse how the feminist expression in this campaign flourished in the Chinese socio-political context and classified different involvements of #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign to discuss whether these tactics could be applied in future feminist campaigns, especially in repressive regimes. As a result, we argue that despite heavy state opposition to feminist activism and draconian online measures, for instance, the online blocking of Yu Liang and some feminist activists, as well as the censorship of radical feminist themes on digital platforms, this campaign effectively managed to avoid misogyny and survived by avoiding explicit state condemnation. We also argue that #SeeFemaleWorkers successfully established an intersectional feminist campaign whereby it helped connect a diverse range of women from different social backgrounds who believed that they were discriminated against in the workplace based on their gender, class and the type of profession they do.

Digital feminist activism

The global reach of user-generated content led to the spread of activist campaigns online, commonly referred to as “digital activism” (Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose and Jessalynn Keller 2019). Together with the availability of new tools and communication channels, such as hashtags, protests like #OccupyWallStreet (Photini Vrikki 2018) and #OccupyGezi (Duygu Karataş 2021) have amassed participants widely. As a form of participatory culture, hashtag activism builds emotional ties by integrating everyone in the narrative and conversation, which may result in facilitating policy formation, social change and democracy (Ying Xiong, Moonhee Cho and Brandon Boatwright 2019). However, critics of digital activism have also identified hashtag activism as “slacktivism” and argued that the “sublime” of digital activism is overestimated (Emiliano Treré 2018; Yu-Hao Lee and Gary Hsieh 2013; Stephanie Vie 2014; Chen, Pain, and Barner 2018). Moreover, while social media seemingly provide everyone with a voice, this takes place in an unequal and asymmetrical fashion (Paolo Gerbaudo 2012). Despite all these drawbacks, digital activism has been particularly useful for digital feminist activism, from facilitating diagnostic behaviours in social movements (Manyu Li, Nadia Turki, Cassandra R Izaguirre, Chloe DeMahy, Brooklyn Labery Thibodeaux and Taylor Gage 2020) to protesting against femicides (Gülüm Şener 2021).

So-called “fourth-wave feminism” has gradually emerged since 2010, making full use of advanced digital technologies to achieve an unprecedented global reach. Fourth-wave feminism builds on intersectionality and the extensive use of digital technologies for activism (Ealasaid Munro 2013, 24; Mendes, Ringrose, and Keller 2019; Sara De Benedictis, Shani Orgad and Catherine Rottenberg 2019). This means that the fourth-wave feminism also strives to include victims of racism, classism, ethnic discrimination, religious oppression, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ etc. The extensive use of digital technologies has given fourth-wave feminism resilience, breadth, and survival. The connectivity and sociality enabled by social media make it easier for feminists to attract people with similar experiences and extend their influence in an efficient way at lower costs (Daniel Kreiss 2015, 124). Defining it as “linguistic activism,” Rosemary Clark (2016, 788) ascribes the success of hashtag feminism to its dramatic performance. This means, the impact of hashtag feminism is largely determined by whether the compelling storytelling of participants’ experiences can emotionally resonate with audiences and attract more people to engage and share relevant stories. By enabling the formation of “affective publics” (Zizi Papacharissi 2015), hashtag feminist activism may disrupt patriarchal discourse perpetuated by traditional media, especially in autocratic political contexts (Ozen Baş, Christine L Ogan and Onur Varol 2022). Furthermore, the anonymity of social media allows women to choose how much of their identity to reveal online (Julia Schuster 2013, 18), protecting their privacy and physical safety, a factor that is particularly important in authoritarian political contexts.

Although digital feminist activism empowers underrepresented women to reach the masses, not all women can equally engage in online activities. For example, Schuster’s research in New Zealand (2013, 21) found that online feminist activism not only fails to reach the digitally under-covered population in less developed regions, but also creates a “generational divide” due to the communication gap between older feminists who use traditional organising methods and younger feminists who are active on social media. Furthermore, misogynist and patriarchal groups have also taken advantage of social media to attack feminists (Banet-Weiser 2018). As Rosalind Gill (2016, 613) noted, “for every uplifting account of feminist activism, there is another of misogyny; for every feminist ‘win,’ an outpouring of hate, ranging from sexual harassment to death threats against those involved; for every instance of feminist solidarity, another of vicious trolling.” The emotionally charged nature of social media has enabled the spread of many radical behaviours which can affect women from different racial and socio-economic backgrounds (Chen, Pain, and Barner 2018).

Digital feminist activism in China

One of the most collectivist countries that prioritises harmony, feminism in China was initially rooted in national liberation and socialist modernisation (Yunjuan Luo and Xiaoming Hao 2007; Xiao; Angela Xiao Wu and Yige Dong 2019). Due to China’s centrally controlled socio-political context, early feminist activism sought to mobilise resources within the establishment, which was limited, formalistic and disconnected from the real appeals of the masses (Jun Li and Xiaoqin Li 2017). Feminist awakenings at a societal level began around 1980s, however, it was when the Fourth UN World Conference on Women was held in Beijing in 1995 that the concepts such as gender became discussion points which led to the formation of women-focused organisations (Li and Li 2017; Liu and Zheng 2019; Bin Wang and Catherine Driscoll 2018). Although 1990s may be considered “golden age” for the Chinese feminist NGOs, radical campaigns and protests outside of these organisations met with punitive actions from the government, as a result of which, Chinese feminists were forced to shift to underground “network-based civil society” (Samson Yuen 2015, 56). The political climate has since been harsh and the control of central government over grass-root feminist organisations constantly got tightened (Qi Wang 2018, 264). Since feminism is conceived as a foreign thought borrowed from the West in the 20th century, it is perceived as “a threat to domestic social stability, national security, and the credibility of law enforcement authorities” (Guobin Yang 2014, 115).

Along with the widespread use of digital technologies and the presence of digital native feminists, there has been a shift in feminist discourse and activism whereby the new generation reject “state feminism” and question status quo (Chengting Mao 2020). This new generation of Chinese feminists create pressure mechanisms that seek accountability from the government through civic participation online (Li and Li 2017, 5), giving voice to the marginalised (Xiong and Ristivojević 2021). Wu and Dong (2019) identified two latent strands of current Chinese feminism: one is entrepreneurial, which encourages women to abandon traditional sacrificial wife duties and achieve economic independence to increase bargaining power in the marriage market and improve women’s status in family. The other is non-cooperative Chinese feminism, which cherishes autonomous female sexuality and considers economic status as a way to sexual autonomy in society, which is more radical and liberating. Together with the traction of fourth-wave feminism in China, non-cooperative Chinese feminism gradually became the mainstream. Liu and Zheng (2019, 2) concluded three characteristics of the fourth-wave feminism in China: 1) grassroots with diverse backgrounds; 2) independent movements to achieve gender equality that broke away from the socialist revolution; and 3) focus on not only education and jobs for women but also sexual misconduct and +LGBTQ issues.

However, “feminism” has become a politically sensitive term in Chinese cyberspace, and feminist organisations have been facing a backlash from the government (Jia Tan 2017) and are demonised for betraying the nation (Huang 2022). Organisers of feminist organisations are detained (Lu 2019; Wang 2018), and they face with widespread state-sanctioned misogyny (Xiao Han 2018). According to Han (2018, 12), “in the Chinese context, what online feminist activism has brought about is not social change but the spread of backlash against feminism and misogynist action.” The increase in stigmatisation and anti-feminism has been found to be partly caused by system justification motivation, which means people are more likely to disagree with feminists when they are motivated by the states or governments to believe that the social system they live in is desirable (Amy W. Y. Yeung, Aaron C Kay and Jennifer M Peach 2014). In the political context of China, this means people vehemently reject and attack feminists because they believe that the demands of feminists will cause unrest in the current stable social order. Drawing on this finding, Yeung, Kay and Peach (2014, 480) suggest that Chinese feminists may distance themselves from polarised labels to make social change more palatable.

In addition to the challenges of attracting aggressive misogyny, Chinese activists must also circumvent rigorous government censorship and surveillance (Tan 2017; Li and Li 2017; Wang and Driscoll 2018, 6). “The space of activism was never large in China, but under Xi, has shrunk sharply,” says Feminist Voices founder Lu (2019). Thus, Chinese feminists have to digitally masquerade and tactically use social media to combat state surveillance and incrimination (Jason P Abbott 2019; Tan 2017). Despite the draconian measures and punitive actions against feminists, however, there are examples of successful online feminist movements like, for example, when Chinese feminists developed their own #MeToo movement (Xiong and Ristivojević 2021) or as Yang (2022) shows, by way of employing sarcasm, feminists challenged the state sanctioned sexism. This article examines one of these successful campaigns, #SeeingFemaleWorkers, an influential grassroots digital feminist movement that originated on Sina Weibo and has thrived despite all the hurdles.

Methodology

In this research, qualitative content analysis is used to identify and describe the characteristics of the #SeeFemaleWorkers movement. Although this movement manifested across multiple Chinese social media platforms like DouBan, Zhihu and RED (Xiaohongshu), Sina Weibo was where it achieved its most significant impact. Having similar core features of X (or aka Twitter), such as hashtags, instant reposting and @username, Weibo is the most publicly used multimedia microblogging platform in China. Activities on Weibo are mainly discursive, enabling mass discussions by its public nature. Hashtags are used as the main promotional tool on Weibo, enabling users to search for content, share, discuss and build communities efficiently under certain topics. According to its August 2020 press release, it had over 486 million active users (Xinhua 2019). By February 2022, the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers had received a cumulative total of 1.07 billion readings, 1.424 million discussions and attracted 3,608 users to write original posts. This research, therefore, collected primary data from Sina Weibo to represent the contents of other platforms. With the help of an automated digital web scraper software, Ncapture, we collected posts under #SeeFemaleWorkers. We only recorded original postings and excluded retweets and comments to better filter spontaneous user ideas and sentiments. The results showed that 1,315 original posts were generated between July 2019 and February 2022. There were two posting peaks: one was from January to May 2020, with 562 original posts generated; the other was from September 2020 to March 2021, with 450 original posts in total. As such, we concentrated on the characteristics of posts in two posting peaks and randomly selected 200 original posts from each of the two peaks for analysis. This enabled us to analyse a large sample of tweets to understand individuals’ motives and participation in this movement (Alessandro Caliandro 2017).

We then combined the narrative and frequency matrix formats in data analysis and presentation. Accordingly, we firstly analysed the data in narrative format to summarise the core theme of each category and illustrate by quotations of typical posts (James W Drisko and Tina Maschi 2016). Then, the frequency matrix was employed to present the percentage of main categories and their sub-categories among all posts in the dataset. Due to the large volume of data used in this study, the narrative analysis alone cannot represent the proportion of posts in each category across all original posts and, therefore, cannot directly identify the most significant feature of user-generated content in the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign. By presenting the frequency of each category of posts, it is possible to determine the most salient and the most overlooked features in each peak, and the variation of the weight of every category between the two peaks. However, since we focused on the randomly sampled 400 original posts within two post peaking periods by omitting retweets and comments, it is necessary to admit that the percentage of each category in this database may not be consistent with the actual proportions among all user-generated contents in the campaign. Lastly, because all the data was gathered two years after the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign began, some posts may have been deleted by users or by the platform before the data was gathered.

Findings: descriptive analysis of the categorisations of posts

After two rounds of coding, all posts were coded into eight categories based on the theme of the textual contents: 1. Slacktivist posts, 2. Exposing social issues, 3. Telling stories about female role models, 4. Sharing personal experiences, 5. Launching activities, 6. Dissemination of feminism, 7. Anti-feminism, 8. Other. Definitions of each theme is elaborated in Table 1. It is apparent that Slacktivist posts dominated both peaks. The following two are Exposing social issues and Telling stories about female role models. These three remained in the most salient positions among all, but the percentages of them varied between the two peaks. Most significantly, Slacktivist posts drastically decreased from 51.00% to 31.50% in peak two, while Exposing social issues and Telling stories about female role models both showed a slight increase, from 21.50% to 30%, and 8% to 14.5%, respectively. To thoroughly explore the contents of the three dominant categories, sub-themes were coded into sub-categories (Tables 2-4).

Table 1. Coding scheme definitions and frequency matrix of categories.

Category	Definition	% (n) of Peak 1	% (n) of Peak 2	Total % (n)
(1) Slacktivist posts	Posts without deep interactions, intending to show support and add visibility to the topic by simply posting the tag without personal opinions.	51.00% (n = 102)	31.50% (n = 63)	41.25% (n = 165)
(2) Exposing social issues	Posts that expose the problems and injustices currently faced by women in society, hoping to get attention and solutions.	21.50% (n = 43)	30.00% (n = 60)	25.75% (n = 103)
(3) Telling stories about female role models	Posts that share stories about the success and contribution of great women, both celebrities and women in general.	8.00% (n = 16)	14.50% (n = 29)	11.25% (n = 45)
(4) Sharing personal experiences	Posts that tell relevant personal experiences of themselves or their friends.	4.00% (n = 8)	9.00% (n = 18)	6.50% (n = 26)
(5) Launching activities	Posts that aim to initiate online or offline activities related to the tag, with a clear purpose and plan.	5.00% (n = 10)	3.50% (n = 7)	4.25% (n = 17)
(6) Dissemination of feminism	Posts that explicitly mention support for “feminism” and directly promote feminist theories.	3.50% (n = 7)	3.50% (n = 7)	3.50% (n = 14)
(7) Anti-feminism	Posts express opposition and hate to the feminist concepts and defence of women’s rights.	0.00% (n = 0)	0.50% (n = 1)	0.25% (n = 1)
(8) Other	Irrelevant content, posts that do not make sense, and advertisements using the tag to attract attention.	7.00% (n = 14)	7.50% (n = 15)	7.25% (n = 29)
Total		100% (n = 200)	100% (n = 200)	100% (n = 400)

Table 2. Coding scheme definitions and frequency matrix of sub-categories of “slacktivist posts”.

Sub-category	Definition	% (n) of Peak 1	% (n) of Peak 2	Total % (n)
(1.1) No substantive content	Posts that only have the tag #SeeFemaleWorkers.	78.43% (n = 80)	69.84% (n = 44)	75.15% (n = 124)
(1.2) Simple interactions	Posts those express everyday feelings in a few words with the tag.	10.78% (n = 11)	20.63% (n = 13)	14.55% (n = 24)
(1.3) Combining other relevant tags	Posts that combine relevant tags with #SeeFemaleWorkers. (e.g., #Women’sDay, #InternationalLabourDay)	6.86% (n = 7)	6.35% (n = 4)	6.67% (n = 11)
(1.4) Knowledge sharing	Posts share knowledge without personal interpretations (e.g., news, movies, literature, and historical events etc.)	3.92% (n = 4)	3.17% (n = 2)	3.64% (n = 6)
Total		100% (n = 102)	100% (n = 63)	100% (n = 165)

Table 3. Coding scheme definitions and frequency matrix of sub-categories of “exposing social issues”.

Sub-category	Definition	% (n) of Peak 1	% (n) of Peak 2	Total % (n)
(2.1) Objectification of women by the media	Posts that reveal images of female workers posted by news agencies on Sina Weibo objectify women as tools and appendages of men.	18.60% (n = 8)	21.67% (n = 13)	20.39% (n = 21)
(2.2) Lack of visibility of female workers	Posts reveal that the number of news reports on female workers is minimal compared to the male workers.
	Female health care workers in pandemic (e.g., Female doctors and nurses)	48.84% (n = 21)	38.33% (n = 23)	42.72% (n = 44)
	Female workers in other fields. (e.g., female soldiers, female couriers, female drivers etc.)	0.00% (n = 0)	6.67% (n = 4)	3.88% (n = 4)
(2.3) Employment discrimination	Posts that talk about the unequal treatment between male and female workers in the workplace. (e.g., unequal payment, double burden of women in office and at home, discrimination in recruitment etc.)	6.98% (n = 3)	11.67% (n = 7)	9.71% (n = 10)
(2.4) Censorship of Sina Weibo	Posts that complain about the block of feminist content on Sina Weibo due to the rigid censorship and surveillance of the Chinese government.	13.95% (n = 6)	13.33% (n = 8)	13.59% (n = 14)
(2.5) Others	e.g., period shame, body shame, girl protection, education equality	11.63% (n = 5)	8.33% (n = 5)	9.71% (n = 10)
Total		100% (n = 43)	100% (n = 60)	100% (n = 103)

Table 4. Coding scheme definitions and frequency matrix of sub-categories of “telling stories about female role models”.

Sub-category	Definition	% (n) of Peak 1	% (n) of Peak 2	Total % (n)
(3.1) Celebrities	Posts that talk about well-known female role models, such as historical figures, influential artists, scientists and educators who have made outstanding contributions to society.	43.75% (n = 7)	72.41% (n = 21)	62.22% (n = 28)
(3.2) Ordinary women	Posts that share stories of women or female groups in normal positions.	56.25% (n = 9)	27.59% (n = 8)	37.78% (n = 17)
Total		100% (n = 16)	100% (n = 29)	100% (n = 45)

Sharing personal experiences, Launching activities, and Dissemination of feminism were comparatively lower than the first three. The number of posts aimed at Launching activities outnumbered Sharing personal experiences during the first peak (Table 1). Surprisingly, only one post was found in the Anti-feminism category out of the 400 original posts randomly selected. This suggesting that the #SeeFemaleWorkers feminist movement may receive little opposition from misogynists and patriarchists, although it has be to noted that these negative posts with radical or rude expressions may have been removed by the algorithms of platforms or been reported by other users.

Table 2 shows the distribution of posts that have no substantive content but the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers without adding significant meaningful content. We labelled these as slacktivist for the lack of additional content but as explained below, we do not refer to it as a pejorative term. 14.55% (n = 24) of the Slacktivist posts simply shared their everyday feelings in few sentences, and 6.67% (n = 11) of the combined #SeeFemaleWorkers with other relevant hashtags like #Women’sDay and #InternationalLabourDay. There was a small percentage of Slacktivist posts sharing knowledge related to the topic (3.64%, n = 6), such as artworks, news, and books. However, no personal insights or reflections were included.

For the category Exposing social issues (Table 3), nearly half of the posts in peak one complained about the paucity of female workers in the media, primarily the female healthcare workers in fighting against the pandemic (48.84%, n = 21). While in peak two, media coverage of female workers gradually expended to other professions. And the number of posts exposing other social issues also increased, such as the objectification of women by the media, mistreatment of women in the workplace, and the censorship and surveillance of the Chinese government on Sina Weibo.

In the category Telling stories about female role models (Table 4), the number of posts increased from 16 to 29 throughout the two peaks, and majority were about celebrities (62.22%, n = 28). During the first peak, there was no significant difference in the proportion of posts about celebrity stories and ordinary women. However, in the second peak, the proportion of celebrity stories rose sharply to 72.41% (n = 21), while the number of ordinary women stories did not change too much (27.59%, n = 8), suggesting that celebrities stories are more influential in the long-term digital feminist movement.

Discussion: factors behind the success of #SeeFemaleWorkers

Slacktivism can effectively increase the visibility of digital feminist activism

Table 1 illustrates that Slacktivist posts, which involve minimal effort or commitment to support the campaign, have consistently been the majority of participation in the two peaks. It is safe to say that the Slacktivist posts promoted the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers most since, on the one hand, the vast amount of information generated by Slacktivist posts in a very short period effectively promotes the campaign; on the other hand, as the easiest way of participation, they significantly lower the threshold of engagement, facilitating more people to participate with little effort. Thus, when we label these posts as “slacktivist,” we do not take this term in a pejorative way but instead, we emphasise that such posts indeed contribute to higher circulation and visibility of the stories and the campaign altogether which help to raise awareness.

This finding resonates with John Jost et al.’s “peripheral effect” theory (2018, 104), which states that slacktivism of digital activism attracts numerous inactive protesters, who serve as an essential disseminating crowd, increasing the campaign’s visibility and influence (see also Vie 2014). The vast content spread by slacktivists raises people’s confidence by showing how many people stand with them, increasing the likelihood of victory in people’s minds. This will encourage onlookers to join the campaign as such posts significantly contribute to the ubiquity of the hashtag thereby encouraging more people to participate as the belief in the campaign’s success rises (Marc Lynch 2011, 304). This means, the significantly increased visibility of the campaign results in its growth like a snowball. The #SeeFemaleWorker campaign’s large number of slacktivists created an atmosphere of great social concern about female workers’ rights, which broadened participation by giving confidence to potential advocates, and ultimately achieved extensive social influence and visibility to those who were previously invisible. However, the decrease of Slacktivist posts in the second peak indicates that pragmatic actions and meaningful communication are more prominent in the long-term success of digital feminist activism. Since most slacktivists easily quit online campaigns due to insufficient motivation and commitment, digital feminist activism still relies on core members to sustain and propel.

The impact of influential hashtags can be reinforced by being subsequently mentioned by related events and prolong its life span

As #SeeFemaleWorkers became a quintessential hashtag fighting for female worker’s rights, subsequent social events, news, festivals, and campaigns related to women’s rights and feminism referred to it and enriched its framework, which extended its lifespan. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, the hashtag was initially created to raise people’s awareness of the contributions and sacrifices of female healthcare workers, which was mostly neglected by the male-oriented media in news reports and government policies for protection. Its extraordinary success then triggered extensive consideration of the neglected contributions of female workers in various fields of society, not only in workplace, but also in the family, public space, and culture. Consequently, this hashtag was frequently used as a mandatory key word in relevant events (e.g., Women’s Day, International Labour Day, and Valentine’s Day) to demonstrate the importance of the female role in society, deepening the meaning of these festivals and prolonging the impact of the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign. Besides, the #SeeFemaleWorkers is also mentioned to support disadvantaged women whenever there is news about women who have suffered injustices, such as salary and recruitment discrimination, marriage and childbearing responsibility, objectification and body shame. These initiatives continue to enrich the original meaning of the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign, giving it a longer lifespan.

The original meaning of the original hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers has not been eliminated or substituted by the ideas of new topics. Instead, the original topic that has already achieved wide resonation was used as a backup for the justification of new campaigns, saving much effort for the new hashtags in building identities and frameworks. In other words, this hashtag allowed for “intertextuality” by enabling cross-reference between different events that are fundamentally relevant (Chen, Pain, and Barner 2018). Loyal advocates of the original influential hashtag constitute the core communities of the new topics since they will be automatically guided to the new hashtags by the personalised algorithms of social media. Therefore, the old influential hashtag can facilitate relevant new activities by providing pre-existing frameworks and advocates. In return, new interactions and followers of the new hashtags keep adding visibility to the original hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers, which enriched deepens its significance and brought it to a more profound level. In the more than two years of sustained impact, the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign has amply demonstrated the longevity advantage of an influential hashtag, which warrants further study and may help overcome the short-lived nature of digital campaigns.

Hashtag builds community and provides space for discussion at the cost of surveillance and censorship

According to posts under the themes Exposing social issues, Sharing personal experiences, and Dissemination of feminism, hashtag feminism could aggregate people having similar aspirations and experiences in a community for open discussion and actions. As we analysed the content of these categories, we found diversified backgrounds of people participated in the campaigns (e.g., university students, unemployed citizens, employees of various companies, civil servants, entrepreneurs, factory workers, housewives and celebrities). This was evident from the examples they gave with explicit information about themselves. In this scenario, participants in the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign have helped promoting recognition of feminism in Chinese society through openly sharing their positive experiences with/as female workers, exposing gender discrimination they or others have experienced, and expressing their understanding of feminism. For instance, the unequal payment female workers received and the discriminatory rules in recruitment of female employees have been frequently mentioned by people from all walks of lives, making them realise that their experience is not an isolated case, but a general gender discrimination against women in society, which enabled the recognition of the feminist argument that is “the personal is political.” Social media hashtags therefore helped build community and democratise communication and information access by providing a forum for open discussion.

In our research, despite a visible leader called Yu Liang, most of the participants were united by the hashtag spontaneously by shared beliefs in feminism and loosely connected by social networks in actions. As COVID-19 got under control, the participants started to pay more attention to the long-existing employment discrimination and working conditions of marginalised female workers like female soldiers, female couriers and female drivers. Despite the diversified emphasis, their posts under the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers united by the belief that women should be respected as equally as men in all occupations, and women should be free from being objectified by the traditional patriarchal perspective of Chinese ideology. People who engaged in the sharing and discussions eventually constructed a community with feminist solidarity. These feminist opinions and personal stories posted in the hashtag constituted the framework of the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign, making it not only the battlefield for more visibility of the contribution of female healthcare workers, but also for the fight of women’s rights.

Nevertheless, the rigid censorship and surveillance of the Chinese government on social media significantly stymie the development of digital feminist activism. According to the frequency matrix statistics of sub-categories of Exposing social issues (Table 3), 6 and 8 posts of peak one and peak two, respectively, complained about the censorship on Sina Weibo. Participants were frustrated by Sina Weibo’s restrictions on the visibility and exposure of the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers, and worried about its survival on social media that is controlled by the Chinese government. This finding echoes the existing research demonstrating that the discussion of feminism is a highly contested topic in Chinese cyberspace (Margaret Andersen 2018; Tan 2017; Yang 2022), which is one of the most hindering factors for digital feminist activism.

Less polarised label could invite less hatred and opposition

Despite the hindrance of rigid censorship and surveillance on social media, using a less polarised hashtag could significantly reduce the disagreement and opposition. In the frequency matrix of main categories (see Table 1), it is surprising that there was only one post found in the Anti-feminism category during the two peaks, which is “#SeeFemaleWorkers Stinky women, women are disgusting”. (Chinese: #看见女性劳动者# 臭女人，女人恶心。2020.09.20, 14:58). Although it is necessary to acknowledge that there might be misogynist and anti-feminist content existing in comments, reposts and the rest original posts not selected into the dataset of this research, the extremely low proportion of anti-feminist comments in the randomly selected posts can, to some extent, reflect that the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers did not attract as much opposition as feminist campaigns usually do. And since the only post was not against the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign but irrational hatred of women, it is fair to say that the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers not only successfully reduced attacks from the long-existing misogynist and patriarchal groups, but also avoided the emergence of new malicious trolling. This finding is somewhat at odds with research by Han (2018, 12) and Huang (2022) where they show that digital feminist campaigns in China bring severe backlash and stigmatisation, attracting misogyny. The less aggressive attack and opposition found in this research could be explained by the research of Yeung, Kay, and Peach (2014, 480): using a less polarising, or somewhat uniting, label can be more efficient than a radical slogan for a feminist social change, particularly in the political context where feminist movements are rigidly controlled to stabilise the governmentally justified social order. It must be admitted, however, that since the study was conducted nearly two years after the campaign, misogynistic content might have been removed by either censor by platform algorithms or reported by campaign supporters. In either case, this is highly significant because if there has been a censor, it was not only on the feminist content, but also on the misogynist content.

At first glance, the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers may have come across as politically “neutral” to masses as it neither directly criticises Chinese politics nor advocates the superiority of women over men in terms of their contributions to society. This just and reasonable demand for the recognition of female workforce then resonated with a wide range of female workers as well as a considerable proportion of male workers since it advocated for the visibility of labour across the society. Especially against the backdrop of an emotionally charged period that is the unprecedented events following the discovery of COVID-19 in Wuhan, whereby the feelings and practices of solidarity were heightened, this hashtag benefited from that spirit.

Moreover, almost all posts using this hashtag expressed mild views when discussing gender equality and reflect on the practical problems female workers face in society. Specifically, posts in the Exposing social issues category revealed real-world issues that urgently need attention and solution, especially the invisibility of female workers in media and employment discrimination. Besides, posts in Telling stories about female role models raised people’s awareness of the contributions of female workers in all sectors of society by sharing specific stories of female celebrities and ordinary women, rather than comparing the contributions of men and women. The posts in Sharing personal experiences category are the most practical among all categories, which made the public realise that the discrimination that happened to ordinary women may be likely to jeopardise their lives one day if these issues are not addressed. Furthermore, the posts aimed at Launching activities are also pragmatic, such as launching online fundraising to buy sanitary products for female healthcare workers in the front line and encouraging people to discuss their menstruation openly in a way to refuse shame. Although there were seven posts in both peaks (Table 1) with the explicit theme of Dissemination of feminism, they mostly shared interpretations of feminist thoughts rather than provoking women to be antagonistic toward men. For instance, “women are equal to and as great as men (Chinese: 女性和男性一样平等, 一样伟大, 2021.01.01, 01:01),” “I believe women are born with rights, not given (Chinese: 我信女性生而有权, 并非被赋予, 2020.04.04, 13:09).” Together with the Slacktivist posts that have no profound ideas, we found that most of the posts in #SeeFemaleWorkers tried to solve the practical difficulties confronted by female workers with practical and moderate expressions. They aimed to justify the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign and spark discussions about female workers’ rights in contemporary Chinese society, rather than disseminating theoretical discussions about gender and politics that can easily infuriate nationalists and misogynists. Therefore, the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign minimised the opposition and maximised the support from all walks of life with the less polarised hashtag and posts, which is an indispensable factor for the success of this campaign.

Conclusion

As China’s most influential digital feminist movement in recent years, the #SeeFemaleWorkers campaign not only achieved its initial goal of increasing media visibility of female healthcare workers fighting the pandemic, but also brought public attention to the unnoticed contributions of women workers in all walks of life, achieving tangible results. The demands of women workers from different occupations have been widely heard, which is a rare occasion in China’s tightly regulated media context and patriarchal, autocratic socio-political background. Through analysing the narrative themes and frequency of the randomly selected original posts, this study identified eight thematic categories with significant percentage differences.

As the predominant category, Slacktivist posts played significant roles in proliferating the discussion and boosting the campaign’s visibility at its inception, making #SeeFemaleWorkers the central ground to discuss the unequal exposure of female healthcare workers in media during the pandemic. This finding fairly recognised the merits of slacktivism in promoting digital feminist activism, despite its shortcomings in achieving long-term practical results. Then, we found that many new online activities with relevant goals and themes used the hashtag #SeeFemaleWorkers, saving time and energy to build new frameworks and communities and enriching the campaign’s meaning and influence for over two years. This finding suggests that reusing socially established hashtags may benefit follow-up activities and prolong the influence of the original campaign, giving digital feminist activism a new thread in reducing opposition and workload when launching new initiatives. However, existing studies have not conducted thorough investigations into the potential longer life span of influential hashtags, as well as the relationship between old and new hashtags in digital feminist activism. Beyond this research gap, this study echoed the existing research on the impediments of strict surveillance and censorship in launching digital feminist activism in China. Although the hashtag on social media offered a flattened channel for open discussion and helped advocates build communities more democratically, feminists should constantly consider the risks of being disrupted by the Chinese government. Overall, it should be noted that this movement took place during a period of heightened emotions and feelings of solidarity when COVID-19 brought most sectors of life to a halt. Therefore, globally, issues regarding key workers have attracted more attention than usual which this campaign also contributes to.

Considering the embedded autocratic and patriarchal nature of Chinese society and the special communication context during the pandemic, this study confirms that less polarised labels can help avoid hatred and antagonism toward digital feminist activism, especially in a highly centralised social context like China. This finding not only provides lessons for successfully developing digital feminist activism in China, but also highlights the importance of contextualising the politics and culture when designing appropriate labels for feminist campaigns. The intersectional characteristic of the campaign whereby women from different social backgrounds came together to discuss workplace discrimination significantly contributed to the success of the campaign (Fredrika Thelandersson 2014). Overall, despite the hindrance of censorship and surveillance, the new generation of digital feminist activism in China can attract attention and expand influence by flattened communication networks of social media platforms.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Photini Vrikki for her support and valuable feedback to the earlier versions of the manuscript. We also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their time and input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).