WOMEN'S ACITIVISM IN CHINA SINCE 1995
Of the 45 orgnizations in China devoted to women's issues, over 95 percent of them were founded since 1995. After the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Huajro, the All China Women's Federation developed a Platform of Action:
- To Help the Poor Escape Poverty
- To Assist the Unemployed
- To Wipe Out Illiteracy
- To Help Women to Become Competent and Talented
Persons
Many branches of the All China Women's Federation have worked diligently to iradicate the above problems, as have countless other women in Chinese society, such as Professor Wu Qing of the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. Wu Qing was a famous English teacher after fall of Gang of Four, who cast the first dissenting vote in the assembly. Today she represents the largest constituency in assembly. She is also president of the women's health network in China, and expresses her philosophy of action as: "I am a verb!" This statement seemed to me to summarize so many of the committed Chinese women I met during my two-week visit.
Chinese women are concerned about many problems. For a general background on women's rights in China, you can explore Amnesty International's Report. See also Human Rights in China for a broader picture of acitivism for human rights in China.
During my visit to China in June 1998, the women with whom I met discussed their concerns and positions on the following issues:
Marriage and Family
According to an ancient Chinese proverb, "Once you marry a girl off, it is like pouring water out of a basin." Further, "marrying a woman is like marrying a horse: you can ride it anytime you want, and beat it anytime you want." China, like the United States, has a problem with domestic violence. The Institute of Women's Studies in Beijing did a survey of 1000 families. Of those 1,000 families, 23% reported violence in the homes. 15% of those reporting violence said that it was the wife who was beating the husband. This was primarily true in the countryside, where women reported being irratated at having to stay home and do tradtional acitivites, while their husbands ran around! (The Institute reported during my interview with them (June 22, 1998) that they had not recorded the socio-economic status of these families, nor kept track of who they were so that the survey was flawed from that perspective.)
There are no laws in China against domestic violence, and no shelters. The Institute of Women's studies reported that unemployed women had flocked to the shelters, adn abusive husbands also often found the shelters, making it difficult to maintain them. The Chinese have not yet developed a system of protected shelters.
Abuse often goes undetected, as women often hide it from families. Many branches of the All China Women's Federation and several of the Institutions we visited have hotlines to deal with family problems. In Shaanxi , the All China Women's Federation receives about 1,000 calls a year, and 20% of those calls concern domestic violence (interview June 1998). The China Women's College has a Hotline which was established in 1993 and which receives 2,000 calls a year on domestic issues.
Many groups also are activily engaged in mediation. The All China Women's Federation has branches at all levels, each of which is responsible for mediation.
For further information on the issue of domestic violence world-wide, consult the following links:
National Domestic Violence Hotline
statistics for the US and other resources
Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence
American Bar Association: Domestic Violence
Houston Police Department: Domestic Violence
National Organization for Women: Violence Against Women
United Nations Global Campaign to End Violence Against Women
Illiteracy
Illiteracy is a major problem in the world today. In the developing world, there is an over 50% illiteracy rate. In China, males have traditionally are are still being given priority for education. Females leave the family when they marry, and many families believe that educating the male is a better investment. Also, the rural schools are often far from where family is, and it is costly and time-consuming to transport students to the school. Again, the male will be given priority. The drop out rate of girls is high, especially in rural areas, and 80% of dropouts are girls.
Many branches of the All China Women's Federation are working to eliminate illiteracy, as they believe that this will help to alleviate many of society's problems. According to an ancient Chinese proverb, "If you are given a fruit, you can use it only once, but if you are given a seed, you can use it for a lifetime." They believe that women should be speicifically targeted in the effort to eliminate illiteracy. An ancient proverb teaches that:
"If you want to change rural society, you teach a woman, and she teaches the family; if you teach a man, you just teach a man."
Since 1995, 900,000 have been educated in Shaanxi province, and 4 million have been given job training.
For further information on the illiteracy world-wide, consult the following links:
EducatingGirls: A Development Imperative
United Nations Indicators on Illiteracy
Vocational Training
Many women's organizations in China are trying to teach women to be competent and talented persons (Platform of the All China Women's Federation); they are urging women to become self-sufficient in the manner expressed by an ancient Chinese proverb, "One can be a moon getting light from the sun or be a sun oneself." Professor Wu Qing stated that "the Core of [her]Work is Love," and the efforts of these groups today seem to capture her sense of dedication to the impoverished and umemployed.
Many of the clients of these various groups are Floating People, who have increased markedly since the opening of China in 1979. Floating People are people who migrate from the countryside to the cities. The vast majority of Floating People are women, whose average age is twenty. There are more single Floating Women than married Floaters, as many of these young women come to the city in search of a good husband. Women Floaters have less education than their male counterparts, and make lower wages. The magnitude of the problem created by the Floating People can be seen from the situaiton in Shanghai alone. On any given day in Shanghai, for example, there are 1.2 million Floaters out of a total pop of 13 million.
The Institute of Women's Studies in Beijing offers vocational training to Floating People, and they train women to be housekeepers. After these women are placed in a home, representatives from the All China Women's Federation observe them in the home to make sure that they are being well-treated. In rural areas, women are trained in animal husbandry and home economics. Many groups also loan money to impoverished women tso that they can get back on their feet. These loans are makde without interest, and are to be repaid in three years. According to the Association of Chinese Women Entrepeneurs, women are much more reliable at paying back loans than men (interview, June 23, 1998). The Association has achieved close to a 100% rate in repaid loans.
For further information on unemployment world-wide, consult the following links:
National Organization for Women: Economic Equality for Women
United Nations: Gateway to Social Policy
information on unployment and poverty.
An article from Time magazine on women, work, and education in a rural area of China.
One Child Policy
The one child policy applies to the Han Chinese, who make up 90 percent of all Chinese. Chinese in the rural areas, however, are permitted to have a second child if the first child is a girl, and ethnic minorities are permitted to bear more than one child. The penalties for violating this law are severe.
All of the women I met during my interviews with the Chinese were insistent on the necessity of having the one child policy. According to Professor Wu Qing, China must have such a policy due to the problems created by the size of its population. Many women I spoke to were happy to have only one child; many spoke of being reliveed of the burden of being expected to bear large families. One young woman in her twenties who took me to the airport in Shanghai told me she did not want any children, and would wait for a man with similar views before marrying. She earnesly wanted to know whether as a westerner, I thought it was morally acceptable to have no children, and whether I valued career or family more. She told me she valued her career more than her family.
Despite many voices of support, the scholarly literature on the one child policy suggests that the policy has created human rights abuses. According to "" female infanticide: has become a huge problem in China. If one looks at teh percentage of female infnats born worldwide, and then compares the number of recorded female births with China's population, the percentage of female infants is much, much lower than it ideally should be given world percentages. Looking at the percentage of female infants reported and comparing that percentage to what it should be expected to be, it is estimated that there are up to 33 million missing Chinese women every year. Some of these births may simply go unreported by families hoping to have more children, at least one of them male, but others may be killed at birth by the midwife. Still countless other Chinese female infants are abandoned and taken to orphanages, where many are left unattended and eventually die of starvation and neglect.
Another related problem is the suicide rate for women in the rural areas, which is the highest rate in the world for women. One reason for this is the pressure to bear a male child, and of being forced to remain in loveless marriages.
For further exploration of reproductive issues world-wide, see:
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
For further exploration of population issues world wide, click on the link to our chapter on population in this WWW site.
Created by Dr. Deborah Vess, copyright 1998. All rights reserved. Information based on personal interviews with Chinese women during June 1998. See "Women Hold up Half the Sky" for list of specific people and organizations with whom I met.
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