The State, the All-China Women`s Federation, and the Women`s Rights Movement : The Fragmentation of State Feminism in the PRC, 1920-1995

Abstract

International Women’s Day, 2015 was marked by a clash between women’s rights organizations and the state in China, drawing academic attention to research on state feminism in the PRC. This article argues an inherent conflict exists between the goal of the Chinese Communist Party to maintain power, the goals of the All-China Women’s Federation and the needs and realities of the women’s rights movement in China. It traces the development of the alliance between the Chinese Communist Party and the women’s rights movement since inception in the 1920s up to 1995. In the process the article takes issue with the assumption of monolithic state feminism in not only the PRC context but also in socialist state feminism, showing that the conflicting governmental and societal actors who make up the process of state feminist policy-making and implementation exhibit fragmentation, rather than unity. This analysis holds important implications for the nature of state-society relations in China, state feminism in socialist regimes, and the transnational women’s rights movement.