When LLMs Enter Everyday Feminism on Chinese Social Media: Opportunities and Risks for Women's Empowerment

Abstract

Everyday digital feminism refers to the ordinary, often pragmatic ways women articulate lived experiences and cultivate solidarity in online spaces. In China, such practices flourish on RedNote through discussions under hashtags like ''women's growth''. Recently, DeepSeek-generated content has been taken up as a new voice in these conversations. Given widely recognized gender biases in LLMs, this raises critical concerns about how LLMs interact with everyday feminist practices. Through an analysis of 430 RedNote posts, 139 shared DeepSeek responses, and 3211 comments, we found that users predominantly welcomed DeepSeek's advice. Yet feminist critical discourse analysis revealed that these responses primarily encouraged women to self-optimize and pursue achievements within prevailing norms rather than challenge them. By interpreting this case, we discuss the opportunities and risks that LLMs introduce for everyday feminism as a pathway toward women's empowerment, and offer design implications for leveraging LLMs to better support such practices.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Screenshots of RedNote: (a) Content under the hashtag "women's growth" as of September 10, 2025, which had accumulated 43.1 billion views and 134.2 million posts. (b) Web-based interface of RedNote, showing diverse search results for "DeepSeek" and "women's growth." (c) An example post combining "women's growth" with DeepSeek conversations. Typically, such posts display a cover image followed by a series of screenshots of the conversation with DeepSeek.
• Figure 2: The overall analysis pipeline to investigate how DeepSeek-generated discourse was taken up and evaluated in RedNote
• Figure 3: The visualization of RQ1 findings. It shows how RedNote posts framed DeepSeek in relation to women's growth, moving from expressed attitudes, to the conversation types they engaged in, and finally to the topics identified in their conversations.
• Figure 4: Categories of achievements reflected in DeepSeek's responses, as shared on RedNote. Achievements that adapt to existing structures accounted for the majority (666 instances, 79.1%). These emphasize performance, accumulation, and competitiveness without questioning systemic inequalities. Achievements that pursue power and rights (176 instances, 20.9%) focus on resisting gender norms, redefining family roles, and pursuing equity in public and professional life.
• Figure 5: Three pathway patterns identified in DeepSeek responses. The Sankey diagram shows the flow from resources (left) through agency (center) to achievement and life domains (right). Based on the flow patterns, three distinct pathways of envisioned achievements emerged in DeepSeek responses: Self-Optimization within Structures (Pathway 1), Strategic Resistance (Pathway 2), and Direct Challenge (Pathway 3).