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Sunday was International Women’s Day, designated by the United Nations and recognized by many governments around the world as a time to celebrate women. But how exactly should women be celebrated?

Two major technology companies took very different approaches, highlighting what many online commenters in China perceived as sharply contrasting notions of women’s roles in their country and elsewhere.

Baidu, a Chinese search engine, featured on its home page a princess doll twirling on top of a music box surrounded by jewelry and other accessories. Meanwhile, the Google Doodle, the temporary artwork that replaces the company’s regular logo on special days, featured an array of women excelling in various professions: sports, science, government, the arts.

Now Trending: Google doodle — women in different occupations, Baidu — girls grow up to be princesses //t.co/O9y2f7I9KY — The World of Chinese (@WorldofChinese) 8 Mar 15

Chinese social media exploded with criticism that Baidu was trivializing women.

“Baidu’s Women’s Day logo made me sick,” a user with the handle Ru Qing Ru Xiao posted on Sina Weibo.

“The Chinese still see women as an ornament, a Barbie doll, an easily manipulated windup toy,” the user added. “This is what a happy woman should look like in the eyes of many.”

Another Weibo user wrote: “Baidu and Google have demonstrated two opposite understandings of what this day means. I’m with Google.”

Some interpreted it more benignly, noting that as the figurine spins in Baidu’s animated illustration, it transforms from a teenage girl to a bride and then a mother, as the items encircling her change from lipstick to jewelry and then to a stroller and a milk bottle.

The image shows “a little girl growing up to wear a wedding gown, and I’m touched,” Shala Muxu wrote on Weibo.

To Guo Yuhua, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, this did not signify empowerment. Rather, she said, it is a stereotype of women assigned to them by a male-dominated society, which China remains.

“A life revolving around family may well be some girls’ choice and that’s fine,” Ms. Guo said. “Obviously, I like Google’s idea better. Baidu casts women in just one fixed role.”

Baidu’s communications officer, Kaiser Kuo, said by email that the design “was by no means intended to objectify women or to encourage materialism or consumerism.”

He wrote: “Baidu is a company that employs roughly 100 women for every 108 men — a ratio that compares favorably not only with other tech companies in China, but globally. Every day we celebrate the accomplishments of women in their careers.”

When asked how many senior management jobs were held by women at Baidu, Mr. Kuo declined to give a percentage. However, Baidu’s chief financial officer since 2008 is Jennifer Li, one of the most prominent businesswomen in China.

The World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index for 2014 ranks women in China and the United States at roughly the same level in terms of participation in the labor force and for equal wages paid for their work. But when it comes to women in positions of power, as “legislators, senior officials and managers,” Chinese women score 0.2 compared with American women at 0.75, where 1 represents full equality with men and 0 full inequality.

Mr. Kuo said the artist who conceived Baidu’s illustration for Women’s Day was a woman who was inspired by “the music boxes she loved as a child.”

The illustrator, Y. Nana, had not responded by Monday to a request for comment. On her Weibo account she wrote: “My idea was simple: for all women to relax and think about their innocent dreams and a carefree life, if only for one day. Even women astronauts grew up loving dolls, right?”

Baidu was not alone in its approach. Youku.com, a Chinese video content website, featured on its home page a woman relaxing in a chair drinking tea or coffee, surrounded by flowers.

China used to portray women in terms arguably closer to those of Google today than of Baidu.

Weeks after the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the governing Communist Party followed the model of the Soviet Union in declaring March 8 a day to commemorate women’s contributions to socialist construction. Under Mao Zedong, who famously said “women hold up half the sky,” propaganda posters typically featured women driving tractors or marching in military drills.

More recently, the Chinese state news media has taken to featuring photos of pretty women on the sidelines of important political occasions. In 2012, People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party, displayed photos of female attendants (describing them as the “beautiful ritual girls”), female reporters and delegates under the label “beautiful scenery” of the party’s 18th congress.

This year, Sina.com compiled a slide show of attractive women at the National People’s Congress, while People’s Daily posted its own collection of female journalists covering the event with the headline “Beauty with brains.”