Women, Feminism and Femininity

Abstract

Women’s emancipation became a political concern in the mid-nineteenth century. Early Chinese-style feminism began to emerge under the Taiping and their leader Hong Xiuquan who founded a kingdom in southern China called Taiping Tian Guo (literally “heavenly kingdom of great peace”). This egalitarian and revolutionary movement condemned bigamy, female prostitution, adultery and the practice of foot binding (Elisseeff 1988). It demanded equality between the sexes in work as in war, and distributed land equally among women and men. However, the Taiping governed only a portion of the country, and their rule lasted for just 15 years. After their fall, the troubled period that followed undermined those early demands for gender equality (Kristeva 2001).

Appendix

1.1 Five Pilot Implementations of the “Care for Girls” Campaign

1.1.1 Anxi County, Fujian Province

The local Anxi county government launched a programme called “The Five Projects” for implementing Care for Girls, namely, “prosperity, settlement, talent, safeguarding, and care”. Here, prosperity meant “assisting families with only girls to be better off”; settlement meant “obtaining decent housing for these families”, talent consisted of “facilitating access to education and training for girls”, safeguarding implied “creating a system of social security for families who only have girls” and care meant “helping those families in their daily lives”. This programme had a budget of 10 million yuan (€1 million) in 2004 and 15 million yuan (€1.5 million) in 2005.

To date, the project has carried out the following actions:

• assistance in planting at least one mu (or 0.0667 ha) of land with green tea for poor families without sons, together with a practical and technical training programme on tea growing;

• the payment of a monthly allowance of 70 yuan to families without sons;

• the establishment of a vocational training centre to improve peasants’ skills and help lift them out of poverty.

The provincial family planning and agriculture authorities invested 2.4 million yuan (€240,000) in planting Longan trees to provide an income for 1,500 families without sons.

In the “talent” part of the project, schools and kindergartens organized exhibitions on the Care for Girls campaign and telephone help lines were set up for female students. The vocational training college in Anxi opened a class entirely devoted to providing a free education to girls from poor families . For the “safeguarding” aspect, the local civilian affairs and health authorities, together with the banks, either provided a grant to families without sons or reimbursed their medical expenses. To help change mentalities regarding girls, local county-level government cadres succeeded in persuading 32 families to re-draw their family trees to include their daughters.

1.1.2 Hong’an County, Hubei Province

This county was selected to be the pilot site for the Care for Girls project and adopted a series of measures to protect girls’ rights and combat the causes of the gender imbalance at birth. At the end of 2004, the sex ratio at birth in Hong’an had fallen to 116.4 vs. 148.1 a year earlier. The actions carried out in this county may be summarized as follows:

• Priority was given to propaganda and education. A mass education campaign explained the impact of the imbalance in the sex ratio at birth, its causes and consequences. Each village painted at least two slogans on its walls, such as “A boy or a girl is good” and each township selected a street for carrying out propaganda for the Care for Girls campaign. Thousands of promotional items and information pamphlets featuring gender equality slogans were distributed. Dedicated television programmes were broadcast twice daily, four times a month on local channels. Teams worked to promote the Care for Girls campaign In more than 40 locations.

• The fight against the prenatal sex determination and sex-selective abortion was considered a key element in re-establishing a balance in the sex ratio at birth. In June 2005, 20 medical workers were punished for having been involved in these illegal practices.

• Measures were taken to control the imbalance in the sex ratio at birth, which included 20 rules governing pregnancy, ultra-sound examinations and giving birth. Women were monitored from their first pregnancy in urban areas and their second child in rural ones, and all medical establishments wishing to purchase an ultrasound machine were required to obtain prior authorization and register with the county-level family planning committees. Ultrasound technicians are now obliged to hold a license and every ultrasound examination carried out on a pregnant woman has first to be authorized by the local family planning authority. A system has been put in place to record all births, abortions, and cases of foetal death, and individuals or establishments involved in the practice of prenatal sex determination or selective abortion are sanctioned.

• Preferential measures were implemented to help poor families, including tax rebates, medical treatment at a reduced price or free of charge, microcredit, and technical training.

1.1.3 Yangdong County, Guangdong Province

This county has devoted more than 12 million yuan to the Care for Girls project since 2004, and has implemented the following actions:

• Some 300,000 free promotional items such as calendars and bags have been distributed. The local government has also spent 800,000 yuan (€80,000) on building 23 panels (each measuring more than 100 sq m) and has painted more than 6,800 slogans in 2,300 villages.

• Families with only girls have received financial support and land for farming. The country authorities have assisted 921 projects of this type and have helped 1,200 families increase their annual incomes by 2,500 yuan.

• Families without sons are given greater employment opportunities. The county authorities have designated 60 companies to hire parents without boys and train them in their new jobs. These measure have benefitted 2,800 persons.

• School fees for girls have been reduced to improve their school enrolment rate; a 500 yuan allowance is paid out to couples without sons who were sterilized after the birth of the first or second daughter, once their daughter enters lower secondary education, 3,000 yuan are paid to families whose daughter enters 3-year higher secondary education, and 5,000 to those whose daughter enters 4-year university education.

• Couples without sons who were sterilized (the men or the women) after the birth of the first or second daughter receive a monthly allowance of 50 yuan per spouse, and those reaching retirement age (age 60 for men and 55 for women) who had two girls, a single girl child or no children, receive 100 yuan per month per spouse;

• Women of childbearing age and pregnant women are closely monitored with a system of registration for ultrasound examinations, abortions, and the sale of abortion pills. A team has been set up to investigate practices such as selective abortion, abandonment, drowning of infant girls and trafficking in women and children. In 2004, 22 such cases were dealt with; a nominative system of recording births, abortions and infant deaths was established and the information obtained is checked and analysed by the county authorities.

1.1.4 Baoshan County, Shanghai Municipality

In the Care for Girls campaign, special attention was paid to Baoshan county’s large proportion of migrants (460,000 persons in 2004). A system of recording births (live or stillborn) and abortions was established at county level, and the statistics were then transmitted to the higher authorities. Propaganda campaigns were launched to disseminate new concepts relating to marriage and reproduction, and advertising campaigns were broadcast on television and in other media to promote gender equality. A decree now forbids prenatal sex determination and abortion for non-medical purposes. The migrant population receives advice and services relating to contraception and reproductive health, and poor mothers receive financial assistance.

1.1.5 The Huzhu and Minzhe Autonomous Counties, Qinghai Province

These counties were selected in 2004 to be pilot sites for implementing the Care for Girls project. They both have large proportions of ethnic minority Tu people.

• Minzhe county adopted regulations banning prenatal sex determination by ultrasonography or chromosome tests for non-medical purposes, as well as criminal acts against girls and women.

• Huzhu county covered the schooling fees of 944 girls from poor families. It spent a total of 116,000 yuan to enable these girls to pursue their secondary education.

• Since 1991, Huzhu county has spent approximately one million yuan (€100,000) on pensions for 2,460 households with an only child, 204,000 yuan to reward 68 families with female only children, and a further five million yuan to help approximately 10,000 households with one or two daughters.

Information taken from de “Guan ai nühai” (Care for Girls) in Dangdai zhongguo renkou (DDZG 2005).