Gendered time inequalities in Zhihu users’ portrayals of women doctoral supervisors working in Western academia

Abstract

Little is known about how social media contribute to perpetuating gendered inequalities in doctoral supervision through time. This article draws on a time-focused theoretical framework to analyse around 460 comments from Zhihu made by users who may include current or prospective Chinese doctoral students alongside members of the broader Chinese public. It examines how these Zhihu users’ portrayals of women doctoral supervisors working in Western academia are shaped by, and in turn reinforce, gendered temporal inequalities. Thematic analysis underscores how these women’s professional time is rendered sexualised, how they are considered temporally deficient across a spectrum of marital and child-rearing statuses, and how they are regarded moody and expected to perform emotion labour. This article contributes to scholarship on doctoral education, feminist theories of time, and social media misogyny by proposing a time-centric analytical framework that illuminates how Zhihu comments about women doctoral supervisors reflect and reinforce misogynistic temporal assumptions.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2026 · DOI ↗