this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
35 points (88.9% liked)

Human Rights

307 readers
9 users here now

About

[email protected] is a safe place to discuss the topic of human rights, through the lens of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rules

Tips

Removal Policy

founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
35
Feminism is still a dirty word in China: Organised feminist activism is nearly impossible in the country in 2025, but Chinese women are still talking (www.lowyinstitute.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30697680

Archived

Feminism is still a dirty word in China: Organised feminist activism is nearly impossible in the country in 2025, but Chinese women are still talking

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/feminism-still-dirty-word-china

In March 2015, Beijing police arrested and detained a group of young women planning to hand out stickers on the subway on International Women’s Day opposing sexual harassment. They were jailed for more than a month, received “criminal suspect” status, and remain under surveillance today. These women became known as the Feminist Five.

Ten years later, and people are still talking about what happened.

[...]

China has dropped 37 ranks in the Global Gender Gap Index – run by the World Economic Forum of which China is an advocate – since Xi Jinping became Communist Party General Secretary in 2012. The Communist Party diminishes the role of women in public office. For the first time in decades, there is not one woman among the 24 Politburo members, China’s executive policymaking body. Party spokespeople often encourage more traditional roles for women – as caretakers and mothers – to address an ageing population. And the Party has made it harder for women to organise or advocate for themselves in China, using online censorship and the 2017 Overseas NGO Law to stifle dissent among civil society.

[...]

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Fifty yuan says the lowy institute is funded primarily by the US through weird shell NGOs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/239113/sshare-of-women-in-chinese-national-parliament/

The parliament seams like at pair with the US and rising.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Chinese feminists continue to resist amidst repression 30 years after Beijing Conference on Women

[...] at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 [...] governments, including China, pledged to take concrete actions to advance gender equality and women’s rights. However, thirty years later, the landscape for women’s rights advocacy in China has changed drastically [...]

Feminist activists and women human rights defenders (WHRDs) face increasing State repression [in China], including censorship, surveillance, arbitrary detention, harassment, and politically motivated charges. Broader movements such as the #MeToo movement, which was inspired by global efforts to expose sexual harassment and gender-based violence, have been targeted by a government that refuses to yield space for any form of organising or an independent civil society [...]

The crackdown on women activists is exemplified by the ongoing persecution of Huang Xueqin and He Fangmei, both of whom remain unjustly detained. Huang Xueqin, a journalist and key #MeToo activist, was sentenced to five years in prison following a secret trial. Meanwhile, He Fangmei, a vaccine safety advocate, was sentenced to five years and six months, and her children’s whereabouts remain unknown after being taken by authorities [...]