The CCP's commitment to gender equality since 1921 has produced vast gains in employment and education for countless women while overlooking established gender hierarchies in family life. Long-term research in Beijing reveals that crossing class, sectoral and generational differences, there is an apparent paradox between women's increasing access to education and employment and their abiding attachment to ideas and practices associated with their roles as wives, mothers and daughters-in-law. A reconfigured “patchy” form of patriarchy is sustained by a dominant discourse of gender difference that naturalizes women's association with the domestic sphere. Unprecedented engagements with international feminism after 1995 introduced new approaches to gender equality. Recently, young feminists from diverse backgrounds have launched public protests targeting expectations of women in marriage and family life, marking a contestation of previous articulations of gender equality. Online platforms are flooded with exchanges about women's empowerment in a market environment that grants them considerable leverage to manage their marital and domestic relationships. The focus of this new generation of feminists on social reproduction signifies a radical departure from the classical Marxist principles underpinning earlier approaches to women's emancipation. Nevertheless, a “patchy patriarchy” continues to characterize widely held gender assumptions and expectations, spanning class and sectoral difference.

The phenomenon of female migration to ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is in fact anundervalued form of revolution for Muslim women. It is, however, a bitter form of strivingfor women’s emancipation. By transmitting extremist thoughts in the education of childrenand on the Internet, women empower their position in a patriarchal environment. The women ofISIS use their traditional role of motherhood to participate in the global jihad. By stayingin her own tradition, the mother is the first one to create would-be fighters. Hence, themartyr becomes the mother’s creation. They use the mass weapon of education in a reactionaryway to demand their place between the men. The process of jihadism amongst women ismultidimensional. Herein lies the girl power that can be considered as a manifest aspect.Women recruit potential supporters of ISIS, translate documents, write poems and giveIslamic lectures on the Internet. The phenomenon of female migration to IS can also be seenas a romantic urge to return to the golden era of the Moorish caliphate and even to thebeginning of Islam in the 7th century. The women of ISIS make efforts to emancipate,however, by making a U-turn.