Changing Approaches to Gender and Development in Rural China

In contemporary rural China women face severe gender discrimination and disadvantage. This project examines the ways the Chinese women s movement addresses these issues. Since the mid 1990s the Chinese women s movement has been strongly influenced by international feminist and development discourses. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this project examines the effects of these discourses on women s groups activities in rural areas. It will contribute to improvements in theory and practice aimed at overcoming women s subordination in China and elsewhere, and to advances in debates over the political significance of international feminist and development discourses in post-socialist contexts.