Why do women write? Exploring women's empowerment through online literature creation in China

As a crucial part of the booming Chinese cultural creative industries, online literature has stood out for its great economic benefit and broad social influence in recent decades. The prospering of online literature in China owes a great deal to the rise of Chinese women as writers in this huge industrial chain. This study explores the initiatives and implications of women's online literature creation in China under the framework of women's empowerment. Drawing on data collected through digital ethnography and semi-structured interviews, it mainly addresses whether online literature creation empowers Chinese women in the digital era. Overall, I conclude that online literature creation might dynamically empower women as writers at both individual and collective levels in both material and non-material forms, yet such creation is still faced with serious challenges stemming from the precarity of the platform economy, the prevalence of patriarchal values, and the rigor of nation-state censorship in contemporary China.