Item from March 8, 1984, in China Daily: Polar explorer Li Huamei, the first Chinese woman to travel to the South Pole, plows through the rich ice of Antarctica collecting specimens for research. ...

Li is a research fellow from the Geochemistry Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guiyang, Guizhou province.

Following the pioneering feat of Li Huamei, who is now head of the paleomagnetism lab of the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, more Chinese women have ventured and excelled in fields that used to be dominated by men.

In June 2012, Liu Yang became the first female astronaut and took part in the 13-day Shenzhou IX mission. One year later, Wang Yaping became China's second female astronaut, giving the country's first lecture from space.

In December 2013, the country's first two female oceanauts were selected. In January last year, the women carried out their inaugural dive in the submersible Jiaolong, in the southwest Indian Ocean.

In September, during a high-level summit at the UN headquarters in New York, President Xi Jinping put forward a four-point proposal on promoting gender equality and women's all-round development worldwide, such as developing vocational and lifelong education for women.