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Vital Voices Global Partnership

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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 ChinaThe 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.

 

 

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

 

 

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

Ms. Perkins (middle) with All China Women's Federation representatives in Beijing, China

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.





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