The Dilemma of Gender Education in Chinese Colleges and Universities and the Way to Integrate It into Ideological and Political Education

: Despite the great progress made in Chinese women’s cause, college students still hold a traditional gender concept. A survey of college students in Nanjing shows that school education and peer groups, rather than family gender relations and guidance of elders, are the dominant factors affecting college students' gender concept. Thus, based on the predicament of gender education in Chinese universities and the necessity of establishing compulsory courses in ideological education, integrating gender mainstreaming into the construction of ideological and political courses is not only an important way to innovate ideological and political education in colleges and universities, but also an effective means to enhance the awareness of gender equality among teachers and students. To this end, the paper will discuss the possibility and feasibility of integrating gender mainstreaming education into ideological and political courses in colleges and universities from the aspects of legal system construction, content system design, teaching staff organization, and social environment building of gender education. The social and economic development and China’s investment in women’s cause have generally improved the social status of Chinese women [1] . But the reality is that traditional culture still has a far-reaching influence, making contemporary college students hold conservative gender values, and generally recognize the views of “men are strong and women are weak” and “men are dominant and women are subservient”. Because of this, it is very necessary to carry out gender awareness education for college students. As a global strategy to promote gender equality, Gender Mainstreaming aims to create a gender-justified society with policy changes that benefit both genders. Gender education is an important force in advancing gender mainstreaming, especially in the higher education system. Because, on the basis of acknowledging gender differences, allowing college students to correctly understand gender and gender relations can help them establish an equal and harmonious gender concept and promote the harmonious development of gender, thereby contributing to the realization of ideological and political education that promotes the all-round development of people.


The theoretical basis of gender mainstreaming education practice
Social gender is not exactly the same as biological sex. Biological gender is determined at the moment of individual birth, while social gender will inevitably be affected by social, cultural, psychological and other factors in the process of postnatal growth. Gender refers to the gender differences formed under the influence of social culture, with different gender characteristics. That is to say, social gender , or gender is a group characteristic of both men and women formed under the social and cultural background, and it will be expressed as the society's perception of the social roles played by both genders in social fields (such as politics, economy, culture, family, etc.). "Gender mainstreaming" is a practical theory of applying gender to social policy and other fields. It is a social concept advocated by the United Nations and widely recognized around the world. The United Nations Economic and Social Council defines gender mainstreaming as follows: including legislation, policies, programmes, assessing all planned actions at all areas and levels to acquire different implications for men and women. Through the strategic approach of gender mainstreaming, the concerns and experiences of both sexes become an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all policy programmes in the political, economic and social fields, resulting in equal benefits for both sexes, which finally helps eliminate inequalities. It can be seen that the ultimate goal of mainstreaming gender is to achieve gender equality [2] . In addition, international experience also shows that gender education is the basis and premise of promoting gender mainstreaming.
It is for this reason that we must realize that social gender is not only a gender or a role, but also affects an individual's values. Values are related to the cognitive level, and will eventually be integrated into the individual's social practice. Therefore, to practice "gender mainstreaming" in China requires us to implement the concepts of social gender and gender equality into educational practice and policy actions on the basis of adhering to the Marxist theory of women.
(1) Marxist women's theory is the guiding ideology of gender mainstreaming education in China Under the premise of attaching great importance to the status and role of women in the historical process of human development, the Marxist women's theory holds that women, like men, are the promoters of the progress of human history and the creators of social material civilization and spiritual civilization. At the same time, with the aid of the basic methods of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, Marx and Engels also analyzed the root causes of women's oppression from the perspective that material production is the basis for the existence and development of human society, and found that it is the private ownership that the root cause of gender oppression. The two of them also deeply realized that the liberation of women is a part of human liberation and a part of the cause of the liberation of the proletariat. In their view, the first prerequisite for women's emancipation is the return of all women to public service. Since it was introduced to China in the early 20th century, Marxist women's theory has become the guiding ideology of the Chinese women's movement. It has not only helped the women's movement in China to achieve brilliant achievements, but also has became the most fundamental theoretical source of gender education in colleges and universities.
(2) Feminist educational theory helps to promote the implementation of gender mainstreaming in colleges and universities Feminism believes that education plays an important role in the formation of an individual's social gender and can largely help address gender inequality. At present, feminist education theory focuses on the gender inequality in higher education, aiming to expose the gender inequality in higher education from a gender perspective. The feminism theory sees that higher education is obliged and has the potential to be an important link in ending gender inequality. Also, through research and analysis of the current situation of higher education, such feminist practices not only help to eliminate professional gender segregation in higher education, but also improve teachers' gender awareness and promote a benign transformation of their gender role expectations and educational behaviors. In this way, it is possible to correct the sexism and prejudice in the existing educational content, create a classroom environment that is no longer sexist, and ultimately achieve gender equality in higher education [3] .

Analysis of the current situation of college students' gender concepts and the impact factors
At present, there are a variety of tools for measuring gender concepts in the world, among which the World Values Survey (WVS) is the most widely used. While in China, authoritative surveys such as the Chinese Women's Social Status Survey and the China General Social Survey (CGSS) also mostly involve gender concepts. When measuring gender concept, these surveys take modern (equality)-traditional (inequality) gender concepts as the theoretical framework, and design a series of value judgment questions around the public sphere, the private sphere, and public-private relations, most of which are conducted on a five-degree scale (from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree"). Based on previous research experience, the questionnaire used in this study is based on the characteristics of Chinese college students, and selects core issues related to gender concepts such as gender competence, gender temperament, marriage, housework, and economic contribution as the object of the survey. And the purpose is to measure the gender concepts of college students. At the same time, this questionnaire also collected information such as gender relations and gender concepts in family and social environment, gender education in colleges and universities, and college students' cognition of gender education. The purpose is to comprehensively analyze the actual factors affecting college students' gender concepts so as to establish the important role of gender education in influencing the shaping of college students' gender concepts. The research team took Nanjing, a city where colleges and universities gather as a sampling point, and randomly selected 4 comprehensive universities and 1 higher vocational college to represent colleges and universities at all levels. In each school, the research team randomly selected 4 classes, and conducted sampling surveys by means of counselors forwarding electronic questionnaires in the WeChat group of each class. A total of 499 valid questionnaires were collected in this survey. Among the respondents, female accounted for 62.1% and male accounted for 37.9%; students majoring in science and engineering accounted for 36.1%, and students majoring in liberal arts accounted for 63.9%; students with rural hukou 55.3% of the total, and 44.7% of students with urban hukou.
(1) The status quo of college students' gender concepts The results of this survey in Table1 show that Chinese college students generally agree with gender equality, and more than 50% of them agree with the concept of gender equality. |According to the data, the proportion of people who hold the concept of employment equality is the highest. When faced with the question of "in times of economic downturn, female employees should be fired first", the negative rate was as high as 90.2%. On the other hand, the proportion of people who agree with the concept of equality of learning ability between men and women is the lowest, with 56.7% of the respondents disagreeing with the option that "men are good at science and engineering, while women are good at liberal arts". On the issue of gender temperament, only 30.3% of the interviewed college students agree with the option of "men should be masculine and women should be gentle", which is the highest proportion among all the options that agree with gender inequality, indicating that gender temperament stereotypes are still quite influential among Chinese college students. However, when it comes to issues such as economic status, marital relationship, and family status, the proportion of college students who agree with traditional gender concepts is relatively low. For example, when faced with the question of marriage choice, only 10% of them chose the option of "a promising job is not as good as a happy marriage". When dealing with work and family relations, only 9.4% of the respondents agreed that "men should focus on career and women should focus on family". In addition, when faced with the choice of comparing the individual abilities of men and women, the proportion of students who agree with the statement "men are inherently more capable than women" is only 4.6%.
There was a significant difference in the cognition of gender concepts between male and female college students (P<0.05 for the chi-square test between the genders of the above options). In general, men's gender concepts are more conservative, and they tend to identify with unequal values between men and women. From the perspective of specific data, in the face of options such as "men are good at science and engineering, women are good at liberal arts", "men should be masculine, women should be gentle", "men should focus on career, women should focus on family", "men are more capable than women", "a promising job is not as good as a happy marriage", and "female employees should be fired first in times of economic downturn", the proportion of women who hold negative attitude, that is, modern gender concept, is 65.8%, followed by 76.8%, 93.9%, 93.2%, 80.6%, and 96.8%, which were 24, 50.3, 42.6, 28.6, 12.9, and 17.4 percentage points higher than males, respectively. When faced with the choice of "couples should share housework equally", the proportion of women who agree with the option is 71.3%, which is 9.4 percentage points higher than that of men.
It can be seen from the above survey statistics that both males and females generally tend to identify with gender equality in their gender concepts, and the proportion of those who hold traditional gender equality concepts (unequal gender perspectives) is relatively low. However, there are still great differences in the gender concepts recognized by male and female college students, among which men still prefer conservative (unequal) gender concepts, while women's gender concepts are more equal. (2) Factors affecting college students' gender concepts Among the existing studies related to the formation mechanism of gender concepts, the current academic circle mainly studies its impact on individual values from the macro-level, such as national and market levels [4] . Also, some other studies focus on the influence of gender concepts on social status practice, such as ascribed status, achieved status and gender status between husband and wife [5] . In general, the above studies have ignored the educational influence on gender concepts or the influence of group interaction. This study believes that the influence of college students' gender concepts mainly comes from two sources: the reality level and the concept level. In reality, the main factors affecting the gender concepts of college students are the gender equality status of parents in family life, including the ownership of decision-making power in family affairs, how to balance family and work, and the distribution ratio of housework in the family problems, etc. On the other hand, the influence of the concept level is mainly manifested in a way that behaviors and approaches such as education and imitation will be internalized into the inner values of college students. In this process, the three groups most closely related to college students are relatives and elders (including parents), school teachers and peer group. The research team constructed a relationship map shown as Figure 1 that affects college students' gender concept according to this idea. Based on the above analysis, this study takes the gender concepts of college students as the dependent variable, and makes a linear regression analysis on its influencing factors. The variable assignment of the gender concepts of college students is the summation of the values of the concept of equality. The higher the value, the stronger the modern concept of gender equality. At the realistic level, the team selected three factors as the measurement standard: the ownership of decision-making power in important affairs in the family, the proportion of household labor distribution, and the respective economic contributions of parents to the family, and dummy variables were added into the calculation model. On the concept level, we select the gender concept of elders (including parents), the gender education of teachers and the gender concepts of peer groups as the measurement objects. In this questionnaire, the question of the gender concepts of the elders is designed as: Have you heard the elders say the following: 1. Boys should have a boy's code of conduct, and a girl should have a girl's code of conduct; 2. Men should focus on career, and women should focus on family; 3. The life of a successful career woman is often unhappy. The topic of teacher gender education is designed as follows: Have you heard teachers express the following views in college classrooms: 1. This major is not suitable for girls to study; 2. Boys have greater potential for development; 3. Boys are more suitable for research. The gender concepts questions of the peer groups are designed as follows: Have your closest classmates or friends expressed these views in front of you: 1. Earning money and supporting a family is mainly a matter of men; 2. Women's ability is no worse than men's; 3. Beautiful is the most important resource for women. In the above items, the smaller the value of the expression tending towards gender inequality, the higher the value of the expression tending towards gender equality. According to the analysis of OLS regression results in Table 2, the gender of the individual has a significant impact on the concepts of gender equality, and rather than men, women tend to identify with the concept of equality. In fact, the gender equality status of parents has little effect on the gender concepts of college students. Among the various survey indicators, only "the father has real power in the decision-making of important family affairs" has a significant impact on the gender concept of college students, but in terms of the data model, the explanatory power of this item is only 2%. Other factual indicators, such as "housework distribution", "family economic contribution", etc., have no significant impact on the gender concepts of college students. The influence of elders' gender concepts on college students' gender attitudes shows a weak significance (P=0.08), but when the influence factors of teachers and peer groups are also taken into account, the influence of the elders will be significantly weakened . On the other hand, teachers' gender concept education has a significant impact on college students' gender concepts, and its regression coefficient shows a positive number. That is to say, in the higher education system, the more equal the gender concepts of teachers are, the more equal the gender concepts of college students are. Similarly, the personality concept of the peer group also has a strong significance on the gender concept of college students, and its regression coefficient is also a positive number, and the model explanatory power is 7.1%, which is the explanatory factor second only to gender. It can be seen that the main mechanism that affects the gender concepts of college students is not the actual gender status in family life and the guidance of the gender concepts of parents and elders. The main way to influence the gender concepts of college students is the influence of school education and peer group. Because the peer group of college students is mainly classmates of the same age, and the main factor affecting the gender concepts of college students is the gender education of school teachers.

Gender education in Chinese universities and the dilemma of its integration into ideological and political education
According to the above statistical data, we can draw the following conclusions: gender education is the main factor affecting the gender concepts of college students. But from the analysis of the actual situation of higher education at present, it can be seen that although more than 100 colleges and universities in China have opened more than 440 courses related to women's studies and gender equality [6] , the number of colleges and universities that offer gender education courses is still a minority. It only accounts for less than 4% of the total number of Chinese universities. The existing gender education has not achieved a universal educational purpose, and the educational contents, patterns and methods of related courses need to be improved. The real problem is that gender education in colleges and universities has not been paid attention to for a long time, gender issues have rarely received attention from the education department, and the lack of necessary support in practical operations has restricted the curriculum construction and survival and development of gender education in colleges and universities. This study also shows that gender education in colleges and universities in my country is still in a state of "absence". 45.2% of the interviewed students believe that their colleges and universities do not offer courses related to gender education, and 37% of the students said they "have no idea that" whether the school has opened this course. It shows that most colleges and universities do not pay enough attention to gender education in the classroom. Even though some schools offer relevant courses, due to the low level of attention and insufficient resource investment, gender education courses lack sufficient influence and attractiveness for students. However, the reality is quite the opposite. Compared with the insufficient supply of gender courses in colleges and universities, most college students have a strong demand for such courses. The survey results show that 61.5% of the interviewed college students expressed their willingness to take elective gender education courses, or participate in gender education lectures and training organized by the school, which also shows that there is a sharp contradiction between the effective supply of gender education in colleges and the general needs of college students.
In addition to setting up separate gender education courses in higher education, one of the effective ways to solve this contradiction is to integrate gender education into ideological and political education in colleges and universities. In this way, it can not only meet the general requirements of students, but also broaden the perspective of ideological and political education research in colleges and universities. However, for a long time, the ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities have paid more attention to theoretical indoctrination of students, and seldom integrated gender perspective and gender equality education into the teaching content, which makes college students' cognition of gender equality only stay at the macroscopic legal and policy level, while in terms of actual behavior orientation and concept identification, it tends to hold the traditional idea of male superiority and female inferiority. Ideological and political education also lacks guidance and education on social gender in the level of college students' daily interactions and perceived social policies. The reasons for this type of problem are multiple. On one hand, in the more than 20 years of development of gender education in China, although many experts and scholars have invested in relevant social research and practice, from the current situation of gender education in China, among those college teachers and researchers, few are fully committed to gender-related teaching and academic research. Part-time and amateur gender education is common, and gender education is still in a marginal position in the higher education system. On the other hand, for ideological and political educators in colleges and universities, although some scholars try to integrate gender education into ideological and political theory courses, their theoretical literacy of gender needs to be improved. And teachers of ideological and political education often lack systematic training in gender theory, their understanding of gender theory and the content of gender education is not enough, and they lack a relatively objective initiative to carry out gender cognition and gender education. The lack of theoretical accomplishment and academic training makes it difficult for gender education courses to be effectively integrated into ideological and political education courses, thus becoming a bottleneck hindering the popularization and development of gender education in colleges and universities. In addition, the leaders and operators of colleges and universities in China are mostly male, which leads to the lack of guidance on the awareness of gender and gender equality in the policies and measures, and it is often manifested that they pay too much attention to the index of assessment, such as the admission rate and employment rate. At the same time, this will also lead to the failure of gender education to get the attention of the school leaders, thus making it difficult to obtain strong support and effective guarantee from the school.

The path of integrating gender education into ideological and political education in Chinese colleges and universities
In China's higher education system, we have inherent advantages to integrate gender education into ideological and political education curriculum. First of all, as far as the gender education curriculum itself is concerned, foreign experience in gender education can provide reference and inspiration for the curriculum content and teaching methods for us. In fact, since the 1970s, the United States, Canada, South Korea and Taiwan have attached great importance to gender education, and have formulated a series of policies and laws on gender education, clearly incorporating the concept and content of gender education such as promoting gender equality, paying attention to gender differences and so on into the curriculum system and talent training program. Taking Taiwan as an example, the gender education courses in Taiwan's colleges and universities are quite rich in variety and quantity. According to the compilation of the curriculum resource network of colleges and universities in Taiwan and the curriculum resource network of technical and vocational colleges, as of 2018, a total of 150 colleges and universities in Taiwan have offered gender education courses, and the total number of courses has reached 1,564. The attention to women in gender education in Taiwan is not only reflected in women's courses in the curriculum setting, but also in multiple teaching methods, campus sexual harassment prevention, and campus cultural publicity, etc, which reflects special care for women [7] . Secondly, from the perspective of the content of ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities, the ideological and political theory courses themselves contain the content and elements related to gender education. For example, while summarizing the revolutionary experience of the Communist Party of China, the course Outline of Modern and Contemporary Chinese History emphasizes that our party has always regarded equality between men and women as one of its revolutionary goals. In the revolutionary war, our party always put the lives and safety of women, children and the elderly first. In the liberated areas, emphasis is placed on propagating the idea of equality between men and women, the feudal and backward ideology that men are superior to women was criticized, which has played an important role in raising the awareness of gender equality among the people in the revolutionary base areas and establishing new social trends. The course of Ideological Morality and Rule of Law for College Students also includes many laws and regulations to maintain gender equality. For example, equality between men and women is the basic national policy of our country, which is not only an important legal principle, but also a moral norm; the Labor Law stipulates a special protection system for female workers; the basic principles of the Marriage Law include the principle of equality between men and women, the protection of women, children and the elderly. It also stipulates the protection of the special interests of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. From which,we can see that the ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities in China have suitable interfaces and soil conditions for embedding gender education. Of course, major universities also need to realize the organic connection between gender education and ideological and political education of college students from the aspects of policy and legal system, teaching staff, teaching content and environment creation.
(1) Give full play to the role of the Women's Federation to promote the construction of a legal and policy system for gender education in colleges and universities A complete legal system and policy structure is the basis for gender education. Equality between men and women is a basic national policy of China. Despite a relatively complete legal system which can ensure equal rights and interests of men and women, the laws and regulations related to gender education in China still need to be improved. Although the report "Outline for the Development of Chinese Women" mentioned that gender awareness should be incorporated into the teacher training system, the content of these legal provisions is relatively simple, and there is still much room for improvement in terms of specific details and implementation [7] . In Western countries, the feminist movement is the main force driving change in higher education. Therefore, women's groups are a powerful force to be reckoned with in promoting the integration of gender education into higher education. In China, the All-China Women's Federation and the Grassroots Women's Federation are mass organizations with Chinese characteristics. Their basic function is to represent and safeguard women's rights and interests and to promote equality between men and women. As a result, if Chinese colleges and universities are to speed up the improvement of laws, regulations and specific policies related to gender education, they must give full play to the strength of the Women's Federation in colleges and universities, allowing the women's federation to lead the establishment of a college gender education committee to supervise and guide the development of gender education. Only in this way, can gender mainstreaming be implemented into school decision-making, integrated into training programs, and gender mainstreaming can be seen everywhere in details.
(2) Guide the construction of the content system of gender education in colleges and universities with Marxist women's theory The integration of gender education into the ideological and political education curriculum should be guided by the Marxist view on women and proceed from the practice of college students. And at the same time, we should carry out a series of special education and academic seminars that are dialectically unified with women's liberation and human liberation. In the process of gender education, the goal should be to "eliminate gender discrimination and prejudice and cultivate correct gender awareness". First of all, the education of female subjectivity consciousness should be regarded as the core content of gender education in schools. Female subjectivity status education is to cultivate female college students' awareness of independence and self-improvement in ideological and political education, deny male supremacy thinking, help women to form a correct consumption outlook, avoid women being objectified, and improve women's personality development. Second, we should help women coordinate social and personal values, work and family relationships. Women's individual value is reflected in social practice. At the same time, family life and population reproduction are also one of the ways to unify women's individual and social values. In this regard, women and men have shared responsibilities in family and population reproduction. The purpose of Marxist gender education is to respect the value of women. We should respect the physical differences of individuals due to different genders, and respect women's particularity in the focus of moral values, thinking and development. Only when our society begins to eliminate gender prejudice and tolerate femininity, can we help women develop the spirit of "self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-improvement", so that college students can form a correct outlook on life, marriage and love, and develop healthy behaviors [8] .
(3) Strengthen gender education training and gender research to cultivate a group of high-quality teachers Educators with gender bias and adhering to traditional gender concepts rather than being a force to eliminate stereotypes, they will become communicators of traditional gender culture. Because of this, in order to integrate gender mainstreaming into ideological and political education, it is necessary to strive to build a reliable and high-quality teaching team. Firstly, it is the training of teachers that matters. Colleges and universities should strengthen pre-job training for teachers and research on special courses. The relevant content of gender education and gender equality should be included in the training and assessment of ideological and political teachers, so as to improve the evaluation system of teacher gender education. We should enhance the gender sensitivity of teachers and help them to establish an equal gender awareness, so as to improve their ability to engage in gender education. Secondly, colleges and universities should strengthen gender research and attach importance to the construction of research platforms. Gender research institutions are the main force in gender education research. Gender research in colleges and universities can provide theoretical support and scientific guidance for the content, methods and curriculum setting of gender education. Therefore, colleges and universities should encourage ideological and political education teachers to engage in gender education research, combining rich gender courses with diverse gender studies. Finally, colleges and universities should collect teaching staff who are engaged in gender education. In addition to the internal resources of the higher education system, extra-campus social activists, experts and scholars, and civil forces should also be used as important supplementary forces. At the same time, students' self-organizing power should also be brought into play, and college students' gender clubs and volunteer teams should be guided to participate in the publicity and education of gender equality.
(4) Enhance the implicit gender sensitivity to create an equal campus gender culture The campus culture of colleges and universities transmits values and mainstream culture to college students, and this influence is implicit. It can be seen that campus culture is an extension of classroom teaching and an important carrier of gender mainstreaming education. The construction of campus culture should enhance college students' awareness of gender equality and gender sensitivity. Colleges should eliminate gender-discriminatory content in campus culture, actively use school websites, WeChat public accounts, bulletin boards, electronic screens and other media to promote the concept of gender equality, so that college students can feel a relaxed and pleasant campus atmosphere, and subtly accept gender equality education. While the cultural activities on campus are guaranteed to be colorful, gender stereotypes should also be avoided in the theme and content planning of the activities. In this way, we can build a platform for male and female college students to fully communicate and create opportunities for both sexes to learn from each other. Colleges and universities should also give full play to the cohesion of student associations and set up special women's associations to guide female college students in the correct gender awareness, so as to inspire young women to achieve self-reliance and self-improvement.
Under the current situation, the traditional gender concept in Chinese society is on the rise. Higher education is the main channel to achieve gender equality education, and college students are an important link to accept and spread the concept of gender equality. Integrating gender education into the ideological and political education system is an innovative approach that conforms to the reality of higher education in China, as well as an important approach to enhance the sensitivity of gender equality policies and achieve gender mainstreaming. By doing this, it will help guide the public to eliminate discriminatory gender concepts and promote the realization of substantive equality between men and women.