Table of Contents

1. Activity Report from the Board
2. CSWS Received Planning Grant
3. Call for CSWS Re-Election
4. Call for Guangxi Workshop Participation
5. Chen Jingying Passed Away
6. News from CSWS Members
7. Suggestions from CSWS Members

During the Guiyang conference, CSWS members who attended the conference held a meeting to discuss various Society related issues. Based on the discussion, the following guidelines have been approved by the board. We believe item 1 and 2 will help us better coordinate our work internally and externally. Members who are interested in the projects in planning should contact respective working committee.

1. General guidelines on project/proposal development-

*contacting the co-chair who is responsible for project coordination when

an idea is first developed;

*contacting the board once the working committee is formed;

*sending the drafted proposal to the board before submission;

*announcing call for participation to all members when the project is funded.

This particular guideline is developed to make the Society accountable to its members, funding agency, and collaborator. It'll be reviewed/revised on yearly basis to make it adaptable to changes and circumstances.

2. Division of labor among the board members

Responsibilities of the board members are as the following--

Co-chairs: one be responsible for project coordination, the other, for membership and internal coordination;

Newspaper editor: bring out newsletter twice a year.

Treasurer: be responsible for account management of outstanding funds and projects. Financial reports be sent out on the regular basis.

Website editor: update CSWS website on the regular basis.

3. Current CSWS Projects and projects in planning

3.1 Current CSWS projects

*Guangxi pilot participatory training project (Yiching Song & Jiping Zuo);

*Guyang seminar and book project (Wu Xu, Xiao Zhang, Juan Du, & Zhonghua He);

3.2 Projects in planning

*Literature (Di Bai, Yuanxi Ma, Hongjun Su)

*GAD Research Methodology and Project Development (Zongmin Li, Ping-Chun

Hsuing, Wu Xu , Xiaoxian Gao, Du Juan)

*Methodology in Women's Studies (Ping-Chun Hsuing, Zheng Wang, Fangqin

Du, Jinling Wang, Zhang Naihua)

At the meeting, no conclusion was able to reach regarding whether or not

individual involved/contributed to various Society's task should be paid.

This is a rather complicated issue, with long-term consequences. The board

suggest to have an internal discussion can be carried out when we have

more time. (Prepared by Ping-Chun Hsuing, Co-Chair)

Dear Members:

The term of the current CSWS board will expire in March 2002. A general election will be held at the end of October 2001 to elect the board for the 2002-2004 term. To prepare for the election, the current board invites all members to submit nominations for the following positions: Co-Chairs (2), Newsletter Editor (1), Treasurer (1), and Website Manager (1). If you want to nominate yourself, or someone you know, please send an e-mail to yanmei@mediaone.net. Please include the following information about the nominee: 1) name; 2) phone; 3) e-mail; 4) address; 5) affiliation; and 6) title. The deadline for nomination is October 15, 2001. If you have questions about the positions, or the election, feel free to e-mail yanmei@mediaone.net. The current board will do its best to answer all questions. You can also visit our website at www.csws.org for more information. Thank you in advance for your participation and looking forward to hearing from you! (Prepared by Yanmei Wei, Co-Chair)

CSWS pilot Guangxi project on participatory training and research (see the spring issue of the Newsletter, 2001 for the details) has completed its first two phases (training session and research field work). Two CSWS members and 12 Guangxi local Fulian cadres at different levels of leadership participated in the two-way training session on research methods, followed by in-depth farmer household interviews and the survey of married couples in villages of a poverty-stricken county. The research focused on the trend of "feminization of agriculture" in the rural area of Guangxi Province and its impact on female farmers’ status and well-being. The research team now is in the stage of making plans and preparing papers for the forthcoming workshop to be held in Guangxi. The theme of the workshop will be: Feminization of agriculture: Policy implications for agricultural production, marital equality and women’s well being. The participants (approximately 30) will include local policy makers and farmers, social scientists, experts in agriculture and small-credit projects, etc. In this workshop, the Guangxi research team will give three reports: (1) the impact of male out-migration on changing gender roles (2) evaluation of the small-credit projects in Mashan County from the points of view of farmers, and (3) the training and research methods the research team used in studying the Guangxi rural households. Various substantive and policy issues concerning the trend of "feminization of agriculture" will be discussed in the workshop. The workshop is tentatively scheduled on November 26-28, 2001.

The CSWS now has two additional openings for its members to attend the workshop and make contributions on the subject by giving a presentation and actively participating in discussions. Topics of presentations may include: (1) suggestions on the development of GAD (gender and development) theory on the Chinese soil, (2) developmental strategies and lessons (both positive and negative) learned from other regions or other developing countries, (3) research on the impact of female farming on marital relations, women/children’s well being, etc. (4) Rural women’s well being since the economic reforms, such as health, psychological well being, etc. The preference will be given to those prospective CSWS participants who satisfy one or more of the following criteria: familiar with GAD theories and methods, some research experience on Chinese rural life, familiar with and interested in rural/agricultural policy issues. Preference will be given to current CSWS members who has paid their membership dues for the year of 2001.

Please email a brief vita containing the necessary information and 300-400 word statement on what you are going to present at the workshop to: Jiping Zuo at soczuo@stcloudstate.edu and Yiching Song at Yiching.Song@alg.vlk.wau.nl by October 1, 2001.

Chen Jingying, one of the earliest members of our society, passed away last January after two-year struggle against lung cancer. Chen was known for her devotion to women's causes both in China and in the Chinese-American communities in New York. Chen's ordeal again highlights the deadly consequence of second-hand smoking that millions of Chinese, especially women, are subjected to on daily basis. Anyone who wants to express their condolence to her husband, may write to her husband, Michael Augustine at: maugustine@sprynet.com. (Provided by Hongjun Su)

1) Supported by the Institute of International Education, Lihua Wang conducted her Policy Evaluation of "Happiness (Xing Fu) Project" in China in June, 2001. Her research was designed to evaluate government poverty reduction policies through studying the Happiness Project that was implemented in 1995. She selected two villages with different outcomes in implementing the Happiness Project in Xuanhan County, Sichuan Province. Two important discoveries in her research include the changes in official population control strategy and a two-fold agenda of the Happiness Project. Since the 1990s, the key element of official population control has shifted from an administrative orientation to a "service" oriented policy. The slogan "Three Integrations" (san jie he) suggests the major change in official strategy. Guided by the "Three Integrations", the National Population Planing Committees and other official organizations have implemented the Happiness Project as an example of the new policy. As the result, the Happiness Project pursues a two-fold agenda. Although the Project targets rural women in poverty, the poorest women and middle-aged women in the village are not benefited from the official program. Since the Project is focused on one child one family policy and the participants' capability of returning their loans to the village, educational level and age have become primary criteria in the official selection process. If you are interested in her research please email her at l.wang@neu.edu.

2) Xiaoping Tian and Zongmin Li are invited by Xiaoxian Gao, Shaanxi Women's group to give their organization a training  project on NGOs' management and strategic planning. They have got an oral agreement of individual grant to cover their travel and expenses from the Ford Foundation and plan to do the training in the first half of Nov. 2001.

3) Zongmin Li was invited to participate in a bidding by the World Bank Institute and got the  contract, as an individual contractor for preparing a course on public consultation in environmental assessment and social assessment for the World Bank financed projects in April 2001. She has been working on three sessions of the course materials and recently submitted her products to the World Bank. Zongmin has also received an invitation from the Ford Foundation in Beijing to attend an international NGO forum on Chinese environmental issues in Beijing in Middle of Nov. 2001. She will give a presentation on public consultation in environment protection.

VII. Suggestions from CSWS Members

To speed up communication among CSWS members and between members and the CSWS board, there is an urgent need to update our on-line and print directory of the membership, especially with the various grant application campaigns in the incoming academic year. As you may know, I was involved in organizing a project in women and literature last spring. We had great difficulty reaching interested members. Our directory on the web-site was compiled in 1998, and our email list has even more limited capacity of reaching all the members. (From Hongjun Su).

Editor: Jiping Zuo, Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. Cloud State University, 720 4^th Ave. S., St. Cloud, MN 56301-4498. Email: soczuo@stcloudstate.edu