getting these vaginal exams because if they are found to have an infection their identity as a woman is called into question as her role of care giver is reversed and is labeled as a care receiver. when infections were found it was reported that women often didn't even think they were suffering from an illness, and it is speculated that they perceived these infections as part of the female condition. these attitudes are common and spread due to poor healthcare systems and health information. abortion in china is legal and generally accessible. abortions are available to all women through china's family planning programme, public hospitals, private hospitals, and clinics nationwide. in august 2022, the national health commission announced that it would direct measures toward "preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing abortions that are not medically necessary." those measures include encouraging reproductive education and improving support measures in the areas of taxation, insurance, education, with encouragement for local governments to boost infant care services and family friendly workplaces. the national health commission also announced that assisted reproductive technology will be gradually included in the national medical system. ivf is expensive in china and has not been accessible to unmarried women. postnatal health the tradition of "doing the month" or "sitting the month" (chinese: 坐月子; pinyin: zuò yuèzi) has significant influence on women's postnatal health in china. denoted as "postpartum confinement" in western scholarship, it is a series of everyday practices from special diet to restrictive activities meant to help postnatal women to recover from the trauma of birth. it is believed that such practices can help women restore their "harmonious equilibrium" in body and therefore prevent certain diseases later in their lives. especially in hong kong, mother and baby sometimes "sit the month" in special clinics. researchers debate whether the tradition is helpful or dysfunctional. shu-shya heh et al. have found that "doing the month" makes women less likely to develop postnatal depression, because they perceive high social support from their family. other studies have also shown that certain elements of the custom jeopardize postnatal women's health, such as lack of exposure to sunshine or imbalance of nutrition. hiv/aids hiv in china has been on the rise as well rising from 15.3% in 1998 to 32.3% in 2004. this sharp rise is due to the lack of recognition and education, as for years in hiv was considered a western disease that would not affect the chinese population and because of this rhetoric china found itself ill-equipped to deal with the social and health issues relating to hiv. there was some attempt at safe sex education and access to condoms for sex workers in the 90s but these were largely token gestures and had no real effect. at one point the chinese government in some provinces went as far as to outlaw aids victims from marrying, or serving as teachers and doctors. this uninformed perception of aids victims was particularly damaging to women and homosexuals as they were perceived as the carriers of this disease. a recent sign that catches increasing attention is the rise in new infections among women compared to men. recent estimates by the chinese ministry of health and the joint united nations programme on hiv/aids shows that the ratio of reported infections went from 5 men to 1 woman during 1995–1997 to 4 men to 1 woman by 2001. during 1999–2008, the proportion of women infected with hiv doubled compared to the previous decade. during 1999–2008, the proportion of women infected with hiv doubled compared to the previous decade. analysis by population reference bureau attributes such rise primarily to three aspects: physical vulnerabilities of women, soaring sexually transmitted infection (sti) rates in china, and women's social vulnerability in china. durin99-2008, the proportion of women infected with hiv doubled compared to the previous decade. specifically, unprotected sex exposes women to a risk of hiv infection of 2-4 times higher than for men due to the biological structure of women's vagina. also, sti rates, as a marker of infection rate of hiv/aids, are also on the rise in china for the past few decades, and young women in migration or commercial sex industry are particularly vulnerable to sti. eating disorders studies have shown a high level of body dissatisfaction among young women across china. like other parts of the world, reported eating disorder symptoms are also significantly higher for females than males. among various predictors, perceptions of social pressure and teasing play a significant role in impacting young women's weight-related concerns. sing lee et al. have found that women's concern with body fat is more severe in developed areas such as hong kong. some interpret prevalent eating disorders among women as a side effect of the societal modernization in china. suicide china accounts for 30% of the world's suicide and it is the only country where women have a higher suicidal rate than men. according to pin qing's study, approximately 56% of women who committed suicide worldwide were chinese. some explanations state that prevailing gender discrimination in china is a main cause of high female suicide. many traditional concepts of chinese society, such as an emphasis on women's domestic and reproductive role, all put women at a vulnerable position. in august 2017, the 26-year-old pregnant woman, surnamed ma, jumped from a hospital window, after she was not allowed to receive c-section by her husband's family. the family declined ma's request to receive c-section because they believe the procedure would make it harder for her to give birth to a second child. the incident has stirred hot debate about women's status within households and ongoing propaganda on two-child policy. in recent years, however, female suicidal rate in china has decreased significantly, from 26.1 per 100,000 to 15.7 per 100,000 in 2000. the female to male suicide rate decreased from 1.2 to 0.96 in urban areas. paul s. f. yip attributes such progress to rapid modernization during the 1990-2000 decade, which involves great improvement in the standard of living, education, etc. it is also important to note that the rural suicidal rate is three-fold the urban rate in china, and the decrease in female suicide rate is much less significant in rural areas. liu meng's field studies in rural china indicated that women sometimes use suicide as a means of rebellion in their private space, a way to achieve the influence and power that were unattainable in their lifetime. such is related to the more extreme forms of patriarchal oppression in rural areas. intimate partner violence according to studies by william parish et al. in 2004, 19% of female respondents in china reported experience of intimate partner violence while 3% of their male counterparts reported such. the study showed that duration of the relationship and low socioeconomic status both have a positive correlation with the occurrence of male-on-female violence, and respondents from inland or northern china are also more frequently found to experience such violence. experience of intimate partner violence was found to exert serious adverse impact on women's physical and mental health. multi-country studies by henrica a f m indicated that 19-55% women who experienced intimate partner violence were actually injured by their partner and they are exposed to significantly higher risk of mental illness such as emotional distress.