Panpan Cao

Panpan Cao

29 May 2023

Gender discrimination, Chinese and English proverbs, Comparative study, Social status, Marriage.

Proverb is not only a special kind of rhetoric, also a particular reflection of cultural idealization as well as the common treasure of human thinking treasure house. Due to its cognitive function, unique cultural connotation and linguistic content, proverb is compared to “children of experience and fruits of wisdom” “bright mirror of every nation” “living fossil of language”, so from the perspective of proverb, the analysis of gender discrimination is representative and persuasive. This paper resorts to the comparative method and analyzes the concrete embodiment of gender discrimination in both Chinese and English proverbs from social positions,  social division of labor and social power in social aspects as well as the idea of marrying a daughter quickly, different marriage concepts, issue of remarriage, preference for giving birth to boys over girls and restrictions on the age of marriage in marital aspect, in the hope of raising people’ awareness about gender discrimination, reducing or even eliminating gender discrimination gradually in language use and finally making woman gain due social recognition and respect.

© 2023, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license