‘No “Women’s day”, we give you “Girls’ day”!’: A linguistic landscape study of celebration banners on Chinese university campuses

‘Girls’ day’ was proposed by Shandong University in the 1980s to provide an alternative celebration of ‘Women’s day’ for university students. This year’s campus slogans celebrating ‘Girls’ day’ have triggered heated debates due to their stereotypical and sexualized representations of female students. These data offer a unique perspective to understand images of contemporary Chinese women, which in turn provides precious glimpses to wider social conditions surrounding gender roles in a rapidly changing society. I will also analyze on-line discourses and see how the banner creators, the intended audience, and the public understand, negotiate and contest notions about gender and sexuality.