Empress Dowager Cixi - a powerful and charismatic woman

14. 02. 21

Empress Dowager Cixi was the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age.

At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China.

Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States.

you can also read: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/10372293/Empress-Dowager-Cixi-by-Jung-Chang-review.html

wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Dowager_Cixi

and here http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/history/known/cixi.htm

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Why do you think more men are drawn to Bitcoin than women? Why is there a disconnect between females and Bitcoin?

That was the question I started to ask myself when I learned about bitcoin, why we are different than men in tech, why men still dominate STEM college majors and careers. Because this is the real issue. I think finally I found the answer- I assume it's not the matter of Bitcoin but information technology. Why there is such a great technological gap between men and women.... Stats are clear: 'women currently comprise 18% of computer science undergraduate majors'. In US. In EU, in IT sector work only 1.5% of women.

What are possible reasons? I did a small research.

Maybe we are just inherently stupid? Apparently not. It was proven by a lot of researches (even not ideologicaly motivated) that women are comparably intelligent to men. At least at an early stage of life. Later, men who are more often involved in activities requiring learning new things become a little more intelligent due to such training. However the difference is usually not more than 3%. This suggests, that despite lack of training and multiple factors potentialy negatively affecting women intellectual development, they are at least as intelligent as men.
The above gives us answer what is not responsible for handicapped position of women in more serious areas of human activity, but what is responsible?
I can pinpoint two factors.

Biology.

People often disregard biological differencies as just a matter of appearance and physiology. In fact we are shaped through our entire life by experiences. These experiences are different between men and women. And not just because we cannot easily urinate standing and men do not menstruate :) . There are more subtle, but ultimately more important for intellectual formation differences. Just to show a few: women visual perception is focused on colors and general image, while men more precisely perceive details and movement (this is due to different hormones inhibiting formation of respective neurones); there are differences in three dimensional orientation based on visual perception; there is measurable difference in sound perception between both sexes. There are lot more such cognitive differences that made up and affect our experience.