China - Women
Leading Progress
Women Leaders in
China
“Women
holding up half of the sky” is what Mao Tse-tung, the late Chinese Community
leader, described about women’s role in society. The Chinese Community Party
actively promotes gender equality as a part of the government’s policy and
official party line.
Many outstanding women, who have devoted most of their life
working to advance the status of women in China today, are working
in the non-profit sector. They provide legal assistance to battered
women, collaborate with companies to promote corporate social responsibility
and improve employer-employee relations, offer education and job skills to
migrant women and girls from rural villages to metropolitan cities, break the
stigma around HIV/AIDS, combating human
trafficking and sexual exploitation of women, and sensitize the media to gender
issues.
Vital Voices recently had a productive conversation with
some of these civil society leaders about challenges and opportunities of promoting gender
equality in China. The meeting was made possible through the
assistance of Ms. Guo Jianmei, Vital Voices’ Global Advisory Council Member and
Director of Peking University Women's Law
Studies & Legal Aid Center
in Beijing.
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From Left to Right:
Lu Ping,
Women Media Network
Ge Youli, Fair
Labor Association
Xie Lihua,
Cultural Development Center for Rural Women
Wang Xingjuan, The
Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center
Wenchi Yu Perkins,
Vital Voices Global Partnership
Guo Jianmei,
Peking University Women's Law Studies & Legal Aid Center
Han
Jialing, The Institute of Sociology
at Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and Migrant Worker’s Education and
Action Research Center
Chen Benjian,
Network/Research Center for Combating Domesic Violence
Bruce Hudspeth, US
Embassy in Beijing
Li Ying,
Peking University Women's Law Studies & Legal Aid Center
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Pressing
Issues Concerning Today’s Women in China
Domestic
Violence
Due
to a network of NGOs and individuals who have worked to criminalize domestic
violence, general public is well aware of this issue. There are several
shelters for domestic violence victims, supported by private funding. However,
most people only consider physical abuse as the only form of domestic violence.
Eighty percent of jailed women murderers serve jail time for killing their
husbands and many of them were victims of domestic violence.
Girls Education and
Illiteracy
Burdened
by the tradition of favoring boys over girls, many girls are aborted after
being born into families who want to have boys. Stories about deserted girl
babies are common in rural areas. Some families who choose to have additional
children do not register their girl babies with the government in order to
avoid being penalized for having more than one child due to the government’s
one-child policy. When those unregistered girls reach school age, they cannot
attend school for education and thus illiteracy rate among girls is higher than
boys.
HIV/AIDS
China’s
HIV/AIDS challenge did not become an issue of
concern to the government or the society until recent years. HIV/AIDS
positive patients in China
largely contract this vital disease through repeated use of needles among drug
abusers and farmers who sell their blood to make money. Discrimination against
HIV/AIDS patients is widespread in China
and the government recently launched programs to change society’s attitude
towards this disease through awareness campaigns and educational courses.
Human
Trafficking
China
is most commonly known to be a source country for the international trafficking
of Chinese women and girls for forced marriage. Most of the women are either abducted
or sold to men who have lower income or live in rural villages as wives. Many
Vietnamese women are also trafficked to China
as brides to Chinese men. Most of these cases occur in the southern and
southwestern parts of China.
Migrant
Women Laborers
According
to statistics, there are approximately 120,000,000 internal migrants in China.
Most of these migrants congregate in the south and mega cities such as Beijing
and Shanghai. Ninety-five percent
of the migrants are workers and eighty percent are female. Many of them work in
the informal sector where exploitation runs ramapant. Challenges facing the
migrants have become difficult to tackle due to the large number of the
population. Poverty and economic disparity between the east and west China
have contributed to the influx of migrants into the wealthier eastern part,
particularly the large cities. Not only are these migrants living on meager
wages, their working conditions are often so poor that they suffer from serious
health consequences. Forced overtime work and illegal deduction of wages in
factories are ordinary types of labor exploitation. Sexual exploitation and
gender-based discrimination at workplace also happen frequently.
“Turning the government into your working partner is most
important” said Ms. Guo whose 10-year old NGO has had an excellent working
relationship with the government while promoting gender-equality in China.
Vital
Voices’ Plan for China
China
is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. With
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Ms. Perkins (middle) with All China Women's
Federation representatives in Beijing, China
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a
history of older than 5,000 years and a population of over 1.3 billion, there
is great potential in many of the women leaders to pioneer new social norms in China.
Vital
Voices, rooted in the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing,
has a long history of working on China
and with Chinese women to promote gender equality. We continue our investment
in Chinese women leaders as well as close relations with All China Women’s
Federation and relevant government offices.
An
upcoming Hong Kong Summit to engage the business community in Asia,
including China,
to end human trafficking on November 13 shows our incessant commitment to the
Chinese women.
For
more information, please contact Wenchi Yu Perkins
at wenchiyuperkins@vitalvoices.org.