Feng Yuan, a feminist academic and head of the Anti-Domestic Violence Network in Beijing, said, “China doesn’t have any independent social movements.”

Nor can the Women’s Federation help much, she suggested, saying, “They are part of the bureaucracy and have to compromise as a women’s organization.”

She noted some recent activism. In Beijing on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, three young women in white bridal gowns smeared with red paint protested domestic violence. Days later, in Guangzhou, female students took over the men’s section of a public toilet to protest the lack of facilities for women and their lower social status, a protest since emulated in other cities.

Yet crucially, say many feminists, there is no political will to improve women’s standing. “A very small group of men set policy in China, and they don’t see women’s rights as a mainstream issue,” said Hui Jin, 27, a postgraduate veterinary student who helped organize the wedding dress protest.

There is no woman in the inner circle of power, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party, which has nine members; there is one among the 25 members of the Politburo. One in 16 full members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee is female. Just one of 120 centrally run state-owned companies, the most powerful economic sector, is run by a woman, Bloomberg Business News reported last year.

Similarly, women lack economic clout. The oft-touted fact that Chinese women occupy 7 of the 14 positions on last year’s Forbes list of self-made billionaires “just tells you about those 7 women,” said Gail Hershatter, a history professor and specialist on Chinese women at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In the government’s most recent measure of how women are faring — the Third Survey of the Social Status of Women in China, conducted in 2010 — nearly 62 percent of men and nearly 55 percent of women said “men belong in public life and women belong at home,” increases of 7.7 and 4.4 percentage points from 2000.