China Development Brief - Gender

Editorial: Riots underline development dilemmas

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:14:45 +0100

Violent protests this month in Guangxi’s Bobai (博白) County—sparked, according to international press reports, by heavy-handed implementation of birth control rules—are a tragic reminder of the pain caused by a policy that has, nevertheless, played a key role in China’s social and economic transformation.

Book casts light on hidden world of male sex workers

Wed, 23 May 2007 06:42:41 +0100

An Inquiry into Commercial Sex in the Community of Men Who Have Sex with Men in China (中国男男性交易状态调查) Tong Ge (童戈), Beijing Gender Health Education Institute (北京纪安德咨询中心) March, 2007

Drop in maternal and child mortality slow and uneven

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:55:47 +0000

Although overall maternal and child mortality rates are continuing to fall in China, the decline is slower than would normally be expected of a country experiencing such robust economic growth, and there is very wide variation between rates in urban and outlying, rural areas, according to a Joint Review of the Maternal and Child Survival Strategy in China published in December by Unicef, UNFPA, WHO and the Ministry of Health.

Gender “case bank” to spread innovations

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:22:08 +0000

A network of people studying and working on gender-related issues and a gender and development “case bank” (http://g-case.id666.com/) are taking shape to accelerate gender mainstreaming in China.

Art and Society: Less socialist, more real

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 01:52:17 +0000

Yang Shaobin (杨少斌), born to a coalmining family in Hebei Province, has put together an exhibition of oil paintings and installations that, according to the catalogue, “dialectically thinks about the linkages between Chinese history, culture and social development.” Nick Young looks at these and other pictures, wondering what “dialectically” might mean nowadays.

Mercy Corps and ethnic Yi NGO tackle minority women’s skills deficit

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:28:13 +0100

International development NGO, Mercy Corps, is partnering with a local organisation established last year in Sichuan Province’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in a new initiative to improve life skills and livelihood opportunities for teenage, ethnic minority girls who have grown up in an area ravaged by poverty, drug use and AIDS.

First person: “A man in my position couldn’t achieve what I have”

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:19:57 +0100

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, in 2004 less than one percent of Village Committees and village-level Communist Party Committees in China’s 653,000 administrative villages were headed by women.Wu Jing’ai (吴京爱), 53, is one of those rare women. A loyal Communist Party member, she has led her village to relative prosperity. Speaking in her native, Shandong dialect, she told Tina Qian (钱霄峰) about her life and career in grassroots politics and development.

Market forces and poverty propel Yi women into cross-cultural marriage

Wed, 31 May 2006 16:49:53 +0100

For centuries the Yi people of Liangshan (凉山) in southern Sichuan observed strict marriage codes that prohibit inter-ethnic wedlock. Now, although many of the benefits of development have passed by this mountainous region, which remains home to 2 million Yi, the prospect of larger dowries from Han suitors is triggering an outflow of Yi women to other provinces. Matt Perrement reports from Liangshan on a form of migration that appears to fall somewhere between aranged marriage and, as some locals bluntly call it, trafficking (拐卖).

Pioneering women’s legal aid group receives cash birthday gift

Wed, 17 May 2006 06:18:17 +0100

The Centre for Women’s Law and Legal Services at Beijing University, which this week marked ten years of pioneering work to protect and strengthen women’s rights, received a CNY 130,000 birthday gift from the China Legal Aid Foundation established by the Ministry of Justice in 1997.

Universities, Women’s Federation sweep Gender Facility second round

Mon, 01 May 2006 06:10:46 +0100

Seven groups took away grant awards totaling USD 200,000 to tackle the gender-related issues of HIV/AIDS, migration, political participation and domestic violence, the United Nations Theme Group on Gender announced on April 27 in Beijing, marking the second anniversary of China Gender Facility.

Feature: Sexual health NGO steps in where the state declines to tread

Tue, 09 May 2006 07:07:32 +0100

Twenty five years of strict birth control have, according to the government of China, prevented 300 million new births. Yet the state offers family planning services only to married couples, neglecting a large population of sexually active but in the main ill-informed young people, among whom sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies appear to be rising fast. Tina Qian visited the booming cities of Qingdao and Nanjing, to see how Marie Stopes International is attempting to fill this service gap while also working with Jiangsu provincial authorities to improve service delivery within the state system.

Degree course boosts mainland Gender Studies

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 21:52:16 +0100

The China Women’s University, located in Beijing, has announced that it has secured Ministry of Education approval to admit undergraduates majoring in Women’s Studies this Autumn, becoming China’s first institution to offer a Bachelors degree in the subject.

Profile: Veteran fighter for “ugly duckling” that serves rural women

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 04:04:25 +0100

In 1993, Xie Lihua launched a magazine, Rural Women, that has spawned numerous sideline projects, including a Practical Skills Training School and a Rural Women’s Culture and Development Centre. These ventures together now employee 43 full-time staff, and the Culture and Development Centre alone had an income of more than CNY 2.5 million (USD 313,000) in 2005, making it a large operation by the standards of China’s ‘grassroots’ NGOs. Tina Qian and Nick Young trace the long and winding road of personal and institutional connections along which this restless social entrepreneur has travelled.

The China Women’s News is housed in a utilitarian, low-rise block from the era of Soviet aid and influence—the kind that is now being gradually obliterated in Bejing’s Olympic modernisation drive. A couple of women keep an eye on the main door from a reception cubicle, checking on visitors, but not too officiously. The building’s long, bare corridors have the intangible but unmistakable feel of the official work unit, ticking over without exerting itself much.

UNESCO sponsors Chair in Media and Gender

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 04:35:18 +0000

A UNESCO Chair of Media and Gender Studies, recently created at the Communications University of China, is the 18th Chair sponsored by UNESCO in China but the first one in this field.

Chinese women selected for joint Nobel Peace Prize nomination

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:04:59 +0100

One hundred and eight Chinese women, including numerous NGO activists, have been selected for inclusion in a joint nomination for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.