AP Photo

Women hold up half the sky, as Mao Zedong once declared. Decades later, they don’t hold up much of anything in the halls of Chinese power.

In 2012, Liu Yang proved the inverse of Mao’s point, at least as far as China is concerned. The 34-year-old became the first Chinese woman to orbit the Earth. Her milestone highlighted a less heavenly reality: It’s easier for a Chinese woman to circle our planet in outer space than to reach the highest rungs of male-dominated Beijing politics.