China: Women’s Rights Advocacy

This chapter analyzes the complex and turbulent struggle for women’s rights in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC was an early champion of women’s rights, passing laws and implementing policies that created new conditions for marriage equality and the health of women and children. But these early commitments were overshadowed and undermined, by other policy priorities during the Maoist (1949–1978) and Reform Era (1978–present). Drawing on nearly forty years of scholarship, Manning traces the contradictions in political ideology and changes in informal institutions that affect women’s political participation in China. She argues the struggle for women’s rights is now taking place largely at the margins of the party-state: through the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the official organization representing women in the PRC, and women’s nongovernmental organizations, and the activism of young feminists.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Buy Now

eBook EUR 287.83 Price includes VAT (France)

Softcover Book EUR 369.24 Price includes VAT (France)

Hardcover Book EUR 369.24 Price includes VAT (France)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Similar content being viewed by others

Women and Politics in Colombia: Reforms, Advocacy and Other Actions Led by International Development Agencies (2007–2014)

Social Challenges Confronting the MENA Region: The Role of Women

A Long Road Ahead for Achieving Fully Fledged Equality: Saudi Women’s Rights Activism

References

• Banister, J. 1987. China’s Changing Population. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Google Scholar
• Bao, H. 2016. The Democratic Project: 20 Chinese Women’s Attitudes Towards Suffrage and Referendum. Online. Available http://womensuffrage.org/?p=22811. Accessed 22 Aug 2016.
• Barlow, T. 2004. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Beckwith, K. 2000. Beyond Compare? Women’s Movements in Comparative Perspective. European Journal of Political Research 37: 431–468. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Bjarnegård, E. 2013. Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment: Explaining Male Dominance in Parliamentary Representation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. BookGoogle Scholar
• Chen, T. 2016. China’s First Law Against Domestic Violence: It’s No Longer a Private Matter. Online. Asia Foundation. Available http://asiafoundation.org/2016/01/20/chinas-first-law-against-domestic-violence-its-no-longer-a-private-matter/. Accessed 31 Aug 2016.
• Diamant, N.J. 2000. Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love and Divorce in Urban and Rural China. 1949–1958, Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
• Du, J. 2004. Gender and Governance: The Rise of New Women’s Organizations. In Governance in China, ed. J. Howell. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar
• Edwards, L. 2008. Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Eisenstein, H. 1996. Inside Agitators: Australian Femocrats and the State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Google Scholar
• Feng, Y. 2017. Women Lever the State in a Glocal Context: The Influence of Feminist Activism on China’s Law and Policy Reforms. Engendering Social Transformation in China Symposium, University of Victoria. Google Scholar
• Fincher, L.H. 2016. China’s Feminist Five. Dissent 63: 84–90. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Gao, X. 2010. From the Heyang Model to the Shaanxi Model: Action Research on Women’s Participation in Village Governance. China Quarterly 204: 870–898. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Gilmartin, C.K. 1995. Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Honig, E. 2002. Maoist Mappings of Gender: Reassessing the Red Guards. In Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities, ed. S. Brownell and J.N. Wasserstrom. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
• Howell, J. 2006. Women’s Political Participation in China: In Whose Interests Elections? Journal of Contemporary China 15: 603–609. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Howell, J. 2014. Where Are All the Women in China’s Political System? East Asia Forum. Online. Available http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/10/15/where-are-all-the-women-in-chinas-political-system/.
• Htun, M. 2003. Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Jacka, T. 2008. Increasing Women’s Participation in Village Government in China Is It Worth It? Critical Asian Studies 40: 499–529. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Jacobs, K. 2016. Disorderly Conduct: Feminist Nudity in Chinese Protest Movements. Sexualities 19: 819–835. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Jin, F. 1993. Deng Yingchao zhuan (xia) [Biography of Deng Yingchao (Second Volume)]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe. Google Scholar
• Jin, Q. 1999. The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Jin, Y. 2006. Rethinking the ‘Iron Girls’: Gender and Labour During the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Gender and History 18: 613–634. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Johnson, K.A. 1983. Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Kaufman, J. 2012. The Global Women’s Movement and Chinese Women’s Rights. Journal of Contemporary China 21: 585–602. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Koven, S., and S. Michel. 1993. Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar
• Krook, M.L. 2009. Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide. New York: Oxford University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Li, W., and L.W. Pye. 1992. The Ubiquitious Role of the Mishu in Chinese Politics. The China Quarterly 132: 913–936. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Li, X. 1994a. Economic Reform and the Awakening of Chinese Women’s Consciousness. In Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, ed. C.K. Gilmartin, G. Hershatter, L. Rofel, and T. White. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar
• Li, Z. 1994b. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. New York: Random House. Google Scholar
• Liu, D. 2006. When Do National Movements Adopt or Reject International Agendas? A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Indian Women’s Movements. American Sociological Review 71: 921–942. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Liu, W., A. Huang, and J. Ma. 2015. Young Activists, New Movements: Contemporary Chinese Queer Feminism and Transnational Genealogies. Feminism & Psychology 25: 11–17. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Macfarquhar, R., and M. Schoenhals. 2006. Mao’s Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• Mackay, F. 2014. Nested Newness, Institutional Innovation, and the Gendered Limits of Change. Politics and Gender 10: 549–571. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Manning, K.E. 2006. The Gendered Politics of Woman-Work: Rethinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward. Modern China 32: 349–384. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Manning, K.E. 2010. Embodied Activisms: The Case of the Mu Guiying Brigade. The China Quarterly 204: 850–869. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Manning, K.E. 2019. Revolutionary Attachments: Party Families and the Gendered Origins of Chinese State Power. Ithica: Cornell University Press. Forthcoming. Google Scholar
• National Bureau of Statistics. 2012. Women and Men in China—Facts and Figures 2012. Google Scholar
• Norris, P. 2002. Women’s Power at the Ballot Box. In IDEA Voter Turnout from 1945 to 2000: A Global Report on Political Participation, 3rd ed. Stockolm: International IDEA. Google Scholar
• Ono, K. 1989. Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Google Scholar
• Pang, X., J. Zeng, and S. Rozelle. 2013. Does Women’s Knowledge of Voting Rights Affect Their Voting Behaviour in Village Elections? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in China. The China Quarterly 213: 39–59. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Rosen, S. 1995. Women and Political Participation in China. Pacific Affairs 68: 315–341. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Saich, T. 2000. Negotiating the State: The Development of Social Organizations in China. China Quarterly 161: 124–141. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Shih, V., C. Adolph, and M. Liu. 2012. Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining Advancement of Central Committee Members in China. American Political Science Review 106: 166–187. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• Song, S. 2016. “Returning Home” or “Being Returned Home”? In Revisiting Gender Inequality Perspectives from the People’s Republic of China, ed. Q. Wang, D. Min, and B.A. Sorensen. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar
• Stacey, J. 1983. Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
• Su, F. 2006. Gender Inequality in Chinese Politics: An Empirical Analysis of Provincial Elites. Politics and Gender 2: 143–163. Google Scholar
• Tatlow, D.K. 2016. Police Remove Bail Conditions on 5 Chinese Feminists Detained Last year. The New York Times, April 13. Google Scholar
• Terrill, R. 1984. The White-Boned Demon: A Biography of Madame Mao Zedong. New York: Morrow. Google Scholar
• Wang, X. 1995. Chatting on Women’s Work. Reflections and Resonance. Beijing: Ford Foundation. Google Scholar
• Wang, Z. 2006. Dilemmas of Inside Agitators: Chinese State Feminists in 1957. China Quarterly 188: 913–932. Google Scholar
• Wang, Z. 2017. Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1964. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar
• Wang, Z., and Y. Zhang. 2010. Global Concepts, Local Practices: Feminism Since the Fourth UN Conference on Women. Feminist Studies 36: 40–70. Google Scholar
• Weldon, S.L. 2002. Protest, Policy, and the Problem of Violence Against Women: A Cross-National Comparison. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. BookGoogle Scholar
• White, T. 2006. China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar
• Zhang, L. 2009. Chinese Women Protesting Domestic Violence. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 9: 66–99. ArticleGoogle Scholar

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Kimberley Ens Manning

1. Kimberley Ens Manning

Corresponding author

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

1. University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada Susan Franceschet
2. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA Mona Lena Krook
3. McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada Netina Tan

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Manning, K.E. (2019). China: Women’s Rights Advocacy. In: Franceschet, S., Krook, M.L., Tan, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights. Gender and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59074-9_21

Download citation

• .RIS
• .ENW
• .BIB

• DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59074-9_21
• Published : 26 October 2018
• Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London
• Print ISBN : 978-1-137-59073-2
• Online ISBN : 978-1-137-59074-9
• eBook Packages : Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Get shareable link

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Copy to clipboard

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative