This year's National March 8th Red-Banner Pacesetter Awards will break from the traditional top-down selection process to invite more nominations of women who come from different walks of life, according to a Women of China report.
The public search, whose 2016 edition was launched on Dec. 1, 2015, aims to recognize individuals or groups who achieved remarkable feats in their respective fields.
For the first time this year, the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), the awards' organizer, will solicit members of the public to select 15 country-wide finalists. The federation wishes to make the selection process more inclusive so as to discover female Chinese role models in a much broader way.
The move has seen exemplary results as the federation received more calls and application from 28 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. In fact, some female military officers and soldiers from the People's Liberation Army have volunteered and recommended themselves.
A woman form the Macao Special Administrative Region has also sent her materials to the federation.
Among the other applicants include several college students and an 85-year-old tenured medical school professor.
Previously, the selections for the National Pacesetter Awards come from the recommendations mainly made by women's associations at different levels. This has caused the underrepresentation of those members of non-governmental and private industries.
According to the organizers of the ACWF's Publicity Department, "through self-nomination and recommending others, young women, intellectuals, grassroots workers, farmers and those self-employed could have access to the awards."
"In this way, the awareness, influence and recognition of the awards can be broadened, and the mechanism of discovering talent can become more up-to-date, public and justified," they added.
"The new method has given us grassroots women another way to apply for the award," one of the nominees said.
The National Pacesetter Awards was first launched by the ACWF in 1960.