Chinese women should cherish their hard-won equality and independence, which have allowed them to play a positive and constructive role in today's society, while striving to make greater contributions in the future, it was proclaimed late last week.

Marking Friday's release of the country's first chronicle on Chinese women's persistent fight for liberation from 1901 to 2000, Gu Xiulian, the president of the All-China Women's Federation, said: "It has taken more than a century's hard fight for Chinese women to get where they are today and they have just got to keep moving forward."

Gu said the chronicle presents a valuable "true-to-fact" picture showing how Chinese women have shaken off suffocating feudal shackles and fought heroically against stubborn discrimination to emerge as the "holder of half of the sky" in Chinese society.

Many women activists participated in the ceremony launch for the chronicle. Among them was 92-year-old Luo Qiong.

In the eyes of Luo, the changes that have befallen Chinese women over the past century are unbelievable.

I have "lived through a time when women had to bind their feet, be confined mostly to their homes and be subjected to the will of their male family members," she said. "And now today women are allowed to share all possible things with men."

But the aged activists would not be the only ones to find retrospection on the road to further freedom for Chinese women helpful. Peng Junping, a federation researcher who specializes in young women's studies, said the chronicle can help guide young Chinese women during their life.

(China Daily October 20, 2003)