Feminism in China
[13] While there were lauded exceptions in Chinese history and literature, such as the Song dynasty general Liang Hongyu and legendary woman warrior Hua Mulan, these were considered to be signs of the dire situation of China at the time.
[15] It was also during these early years of feminism in China that the New Woman movement emerged in their infancy stage promoting ideas of education for women, gender equality, and freedom from constrictive Confucian practices.
Her visit fueled the belief among elites in Nationalist-era China that the use of contraception would improve the "quality" of the Chinese people[27]: 10 and resulted in many newspaper articles addressing the benefits and shortcomings of birth control.
[27]: 41 In the view of some feminists, social conservatives' powerful opposition to abortion de-criminalization would result in a backlash that would harm other efforts to improve women's status in relation to men.
[31] At the time, they were the most progressive marriage laws in China and created the conditions for women to divorce men they had been forced to marry, leave abusive spouses, and till their own land.
[29]: 45 In 1942, Ding Ling used International Women's Day to point out the hypocritical attitudes and behaviors of male communists and solved the special pressure on female revolutionaries.
[34] In conjunction with land reform, the movement promoted women's issues such as the elimination of bride prices and reversing the stigma against widows remarrying.
[29]: 148 The narratives of these women protagonists begin with them oppressed by misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of their own internal strength and the CCP.
"[37] Beginning in the 70s and continuing in the 80s, however, many Chinese feminists began arguing that the Communist government had been "consistently willing to treat women's liberation as something to be achieved later, after class inequalities had been taken care of.
[40] In a show of hospitality, then Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Jiang Zemin announced at the opening ceremony that "men-women equality is a basic national policy".
[43] The concept of Non-Government Organization (NGO) was thus introduced into China, giving rise to many feminist alliances in 21st century China, such as the Beijing Zhongze Legal Consulting Service Center led by Guo Jianmei, the Henan Shequ Educational Research Center, and the Anti-Domestic Violence Network which spearheaded the 20-year long campaign of enacting anti-domestic violence law, etc.
[53] In 2013, the first woman to bring a gender discrimination lawsuit in China, a 23-year-old who went by the pseudonym of Cao Ju, won a small settlement of 30,000 yuan and an official apology from the Juren Academy.
[50] She later stated in the New York Times that police had told her no crime had happened; Li admitted beating her but criticized her for discussing private things in public.
In Chinese society during this time, parents would scare their daughters at a very young age by telling them that they had to get married and have bound feet to be happy in life.
[64] During the May Fourth Era, Chinese feminists began to reject foot-binding as a Feudal ideal, as they saw it as a great inequality for women in the new modern social system of the 1900s.
[64] Having bound feet meant being physically held back and controlled by a male-dominated society, and women during this time wanted to feel more free and independent.
In addition to the call for an institutional change of the patriarchal family in favor of individual freedom and women's liberation, many scholars also discussed various gender issues in their writings.
Lu Xun, a leading figure and influential writer of modern Chinese literature, published an article in the New Youth in 1918 titled "My Views on Chastity."
[29]: 16 A woman forced into an arranged marriage by her family, Miss Zhao, committed suicide by cutting her throat while being transported to the house of her would-be husband.
[29]: 16 Feminist commentators included Mao Zedong, who published nine newspaper articles about the suicide and the need to overhaul societal norms relating to women.
[79] More recent scholarly analysis begins with the naming and aims to identify the forms of gender struggles popularly referred to as "Chinese feminism" within China and in anglophone academe.
These actual contentions on the ground, however, are obscured by the two dominant analytical perspectives, both of which follow lineages of Western thoughts and priorities: "Chinese feminism is discursively annihilated as it is besieged by the liberal preoccupation with China's 'authoritarian present' and the new left agenda to resurrect its 'socialist legacy.
Li argues that because there are cultural and language differences between the East and West, the influence of Western ideology becomes a threat to establishing an independent Chinese feminist theory.
During her time in the CCP, Ding Ling published several well-known essays and novels concerning gender issues and living situation of women.
[95] Because of her explicit descriptions of sentimentality and sexuality, as well as her public critique of the CCP's leadership, Ding Ling was denounced as a "rightist" and purged from the party in 1957.
[96][97] Contemporary Chinese feminist thinkers, activists, writers and lawyers include: Ai Xiongming, Wang Zheng, Lü Pin, and Zhao Sile.
Other organizations in China, such as the Human Rights Watch, addresses that the ACWF "is promoting a damaging narrative about women's subservience in an attempt to fix social issues".
[106] In early March 2015, young feminists around China were preparing to distribute stickers with information about gender equality and sexual harassment, such as men groping women on crowded trains and buses[when?
[106][109][110] At the end of 2015, Amnesty International recalled that during "the past two years, the Chinese authorities have stopped the activities of three non-governmental organizations defending the rights of women."
This classification imposes constraints on various aspects of their lives, affecting their employment prospects, restricting their physical movement, and limiting their civil and political rights.
