Global concepts, local practices: Chinese feminism since the fourth UN conference on women

Feminist Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 40-70

  Wang, Zheng ^a   Zhang, Ying ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953300771     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (36)

1. Ping-chun Hsiung et al., eds., Chinese Women Organizing: Cadres, Feminists, Muslims, Queers (Oxford: Berg, 2001), remains the major volume on the subject.
2. For definitions of feminism employed by the Global Feminisms Project and a discussion of activists selected in China, see Jayati Lai et al., "Recasting Global Feminisms: Toward a Comparative Historical Approach to Women's Activism and Feminist Scholarship, " Feminist Studies, in this issue.
3. Also see www.umich.edu/∼glblfem/GFP for more information in Chinese, English, and Polish. China site transcripts can be found at www.umich.edu/ ∼glblfem/ch/china.html. In this article, we cite most, but not all, of the Chinese interviewees.
4. See Wang Zheng, "Research on Women in Contemporary China, " in Guide to Women's Studies in China, ed. Gail Hershatter (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1998), 1-43.
5. Myra Marx Ferree discusses the concept of "transnational opportunity structures" in her chapter, "Globalization and Feminism: Opportunities and Obstacles for Activism in the Global Arena, " in Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights, ed. Myra Marx Ferree and Aili Man Tripp (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 3-23.
6. Literally translated as such, this phrase implies "integrating China into the world community." It frequently appears in official documents and media, connoting efforts to modify Chinese institutions in order to either catch up or merge with the global system in all aspects of social, political, and economic life. In their GFP interviews the Chinese activists mention how they take advantage of this official rhetoric to promote feminist work.
7. For the mixed effects of Chinese socialist policies on women's liberation, see Kim-berley Ens Manning, "Making a Great Leap Forward? The Politics of Women's Liberation in Maoist China" (574-593).
8. Gao Xiaoxian, "'The Silver Flower Contest': Rural Women in 1950s China and the Gendered Division of Labor" (594-612).
9. Jin Yihong, "Rethinking the 'Iron Girls': Gender and Labor during the Chinese Cultural Revolution" (613-634), all in "Translating Feminisms in China, " ed. Dorothy Ko and Wang Zheng, special issue, Gender and History 18 (November 2006).
10. Gail Hershatter, "The Gender of Memory: Rural Chinese Women and the 1950s, " Signs 28 (Autumn 2002): 34-70.
11. See also GFP China Booklet, interview with Liu Bohong, 190-91, for an understanding of the pervasiveness of the Marxist theory of women in the All-China Women's Federation.
12. GFP China Booklet, interview with Zhang Lixi, 271.
13. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., interview with Li Huiying, 145.
14. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., interview with Liu Bohong, 190-91.
15. See Wang Zheng, "Gender, Employment, and Women's Resistance, " in Chinese Society: Change. Conflict, and Resistance, 2d. ed., ed. Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (London: Routledge, 2003), 158-82.
16. GFP China Booklet, interview with Li Huiying, 160.
17. Presentations by scholars and government officials at the conference on population sex-ratio imbalances are collected in the Newsletter of Gender and Public Policy of the Women's Studies Center at the Central Party School, No. 2 (2007). This is an informal publication for internal circulation.
18. For more information on UN "gender mainstreaming, " see "Gender Mainstreaming: Extract from Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997 (A/52/3, 18 Sept. 1997), " www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/ GMS.PDF. For an explanation of gender training as an essential part of gender mainstreaming.
19. see the document created by a 2001 UNDP/UNIFEM joint workshop on gender training, "Introductory Gender Analysis and Gender Planning Training Module for UNDP Staff, " www.undp.org/women/docs/GenderAnalysisTrainModule.pdf.
20. Ge Youli wrote about her experiences with the group in "East Meets West Feminist Translation Group: A Conversation between Two Participants, " coauthored with Susan Jolly, in Chinese Women Organizing, 61-75.
21. Shehuixingbie yu fazhan peixun shouce (A manual for gender and development training), ed. Bu Wei et al. (UNDP Representative Office in Beijing, China). An informal publication, the manual does not contain a publishing date and it has been circulated internally among feminist activists (Zhang Lixi and Li Huiying, two of the GFP interviewees, helped in the compilation; Ge Youli, the organizer and initiator of the project, did not list her name in the manual).
22. GFP China Booklet, interview with Liu Bohong, 188.
23. Tigao shehuixingbie zhuliuhua nengli zhidao shouce (Enhance the capacity of gender main-streaming: a guidance brochure) by China's Team of the Project "Enhance the Capacity of Gender Mainstreaming in Members of the International Labor Organization" (Beijing: Chinese Society Press, 2004).
24. The widely circulated statement on women's status first appeared in French socialist Charles Fourier's 1808 Théone des quatre mouvements and as such was incorporated into the Marxist theory of women's liberation. Generations of Chinese feminists, since the early twentieth century, have deployed this "universal truth" to compel state power holders to live up to "international standards" on gender equality.
25. GFP China Booklet, interview with Gao Xiaoxian, 62.
26. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., 67.
27. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., interview with Chen Mingxia, 36.
28. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., 43.
29. Indian interviews in the GFP also show some level of the combination of bottom-up and top-down model. However, the China case fully reveals the crucial role that this pattern of operation works in Chinese feminist practice.
30. GFP China Booklet, interview with Wang Cuiyu, 202.
31. GFP China Booklet, Ibid., interview with Wang Xingjuan, 227.
32. See Wang Zheng, "'State Feminism'? Gender and Socialist State Formation in Maoist China, " Feminist Studies 31 (Fall 2005): 519-51.
33. "Connecting with the international track" has been a widely circulated phrase in the dominant discourse since China associated itself with global capitalism. Deploying the universal logic but twisting the content, Chinese feminists have instead promoted the phrase "connecting with the track of the international women's movements." The usage appears quite frequently in feminist writings in Chinese. Examples can be found on these websites: www.help-poverty.org.cn/helpweb2/ngoyj/ngoyjl8-l.htm and www.china-gad.org/Infor/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=4209. For a discussion of Chinese feminists' efforts to "connect with the international track, ".
34. see Min Dongchao, "What about Other Translation Routes (East-West): The Concept of the Term 'Gender' Traveling into and throughout China, " in Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory, ed. Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironesco (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), 84-89.
35. GFP China Booklet, interview with Liu Bohong, 181.
36. For a critical assessment, see Wang Zheng, "Feminist Networks, " in Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism, ed. You-tien Hsing and Ching Kwan Lee (New York: Routledge, 2010), 101-18.