THE picture of a young woman in a see-through dress was meant as a kindly entreaty. “Girls”, the accompanying text on Shanghai Metro's microblog went, “please be self-dignified to avoid perverts”. Following a spate of sexual harassment on Shanghai's sprawling underground, the metro management is asking women to cover up. But since its posting on June 20th, the picture has attracted attention for other reasons. It sparked a flurry of debate in the Chinese media—and prompted action from some young feminists.

On June 24th, two young women draped in black robes and holding placards took to the metro in protest. They uploaded their photos onto microblogs. “I can be flirtatious, but you can't harass”, one placard read. “We want to feel cool! We don't want dirty hands”, went the other. The photos, which have been retweeted tens of thousands of times, are a reaction to an online poll. Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, asked some 45,000 people what they thought of Shanghai Metro's call for modest dressing. Almost 70% said that women should be careful to dress in such a way as to avoid sexual harassment. This is not the reaction the protesters in ersatz burkas were hoping to inspire. China never experienced the feminist awakening that America and Europe did in the 1960s and 70s. The majority reaction to the metro's post illustrates the at times perplexing status of what used to be called women's lib in China today. Equal in many respects—women after all make up 46% of China's labour workforce—still they encounter a daunting array of patriarchal attitudes. (This month saw China's first woman head into space and yet also a miserable case of forced abortion.) Though female high school students are outstripping their male peers in the fiercely competitive college entrance exams, they face discrimination in the workplace and are generally expected to manage the domestic sphere alone. China comes 61st in the Global Gender Gap Index, which is compiled by the World Economic Forum. (Iceland ranks 1st, Britain and America are 16th and 17th.) Feminism never arrived here with a thunderous crack, but elements have crept in over the past 40 years. Mao Zedong famously said women “hold up half the sky”, and during the Cultural Revolution they worked alongside men. In the 1980s, books on gender theory were translated into Chinese. When the fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing in 1995, the then-president Jiang Zemin announced that gender equality was a matter of basic national policy. But in the 1990s feminism was still largely an academic pursuit. It is only over the past decade that feminism has gained momentum at a social level, thanks in large part to women's competitiveness in the workplace and the internet, says Liu Bohong, the deputy director of the Women's Studies Institute of China.

The protesters on the metro came up with their idea over a girly Saturday-night dinner. Xiangqi (a nickname), 25, and friends were lamenting society's values. Why were the female victims blamed for sexual harassment, not the harassers themselves? “We decided to turn our grumbling into street action,” says Xiangqi, the director of Shanghai Women's Love, an NGO focusing on reducing discrimination based on sexual orientation. Their intention was to mount a creative protest that would stir discussion in Chinese society, one that would “occupy public space”.

Similar small-scale feminist protests have been popping up lately. In February, a group of university students gathered in Guangzhou to occupy men's toilets, calling for greater consideration of women's needs. During a conference at Shanghai Pride earlier this month, a woman stripped to raise awareness for lesbian rights during an otherwise male-dominated festival.

Such protests have been small (public demonstrations with broad themes are generally rare in China), there are other signs the public is losing patience with traditional thinking. When Tu Shiyou, 38, a self-styled “virginity goddess” launched Preserve Virginity, a website to advocate chastity among unmarried women, she was surprised by the backlash. Ms Tu's site promotes chastity to “purify society and protect women's rights”. Since its launch in February, it has been hacked and flooded with pornography and Ms Tu herself has been doused in vitriol. “I've hidden from public view for nearly three months as most people don't understand”, Ms Tu says. “They think the concept is bizarre in China today.”