Meet the women succeeding in male-dominated industries in China
Kou Aizhe from Story FM: In 2011, I was working in the Beijing office of a European company, listening to my boss chat about her recent business trip to Japan. She recalled how they hired a charter driver, and how she (the driver) took them to many interesting but dangerous places.
Because of the pronoun, I blurted out, “Wow, I can’t believe a female driver did all that!”
My boss instantly stopped talking. She demanded, quite angrily, “What do you mean? Can’t women drive?”
She had a point. Why was I so fixated on the driver’s gender? Were female drivers truly that rare? Did my choice of words—“female driver”—reflect the common pejorative view that women are bad at driving?
There’s a first time for everything, including deconstructing your own vision of gender. It’s an ongoing process, for sure, but I am working on it.
Recently at Story FM, we’ve been gathering stories from our audience, particularly from our female listeners. Many of these women have charted their own paths in challenging, typically male-dominated industries. They’ve got every reason to boast, and their testimonies are as impressive as they are diverse: sailors, firefighters, military R&D, AI-assisted manufacturing; you name it.
Founded in 2017 by Kou Aizhe, Story FM is one of the most renowned podcast in China. Each episode focuses on ordinary people’s lives and viewpoints, including the difficulties of marginalized people. Through intimate and private interviews, Story FM digs out first-person experiences and lets listeners immerse themselves in another person’s voice and feelings. You can listen to their podcast in Chinese on Ximalaya, Qingting FM, Apple Podcasts, and the 故事FM mini-app on WeChat.
Translated By
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a Spanish translator, writer and creative currently based in Beijing, where she is part of Spittoon International Arts Collective and a regular contributor to The Beijinger. You can find her prose and poetry featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Womanhood, Sledgehammer and more. Her comics and linocut prints have appeared in Shaving in the Dark, F*EMS and Celestite Poetry. Her literary translation work has been published or is forthcoming with a series of publishing houses and magazines, such as Penguin, De Gruyter, Spittoon Magazine and Books from Taiwan.
