CSWS Newsletter

Contents:

Announcements | Anniversary | CSWS at AAS '98

'98 Membership Dues | Questionnaire

Announcements

Announcement - Grant News:
Gender, Poverty, and Rural Development: Participatory Empowerment Projects in China, 1998-1999

The Ford Foundation has awarded a grant to CSWS for support for efforts in China to ensure implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. CSWS will collaborate with several organizations and many individual scholars and activities to carry out the project in China.

The topics of the project include: feminization of poverty, poverty alleviation, health, education, and women's (especially ethnic women's) agency role in development in underdeveloped areas. The project is composed of four interrelated sub-projects: to hold two participatory interactive-empowerment workshops in a remote region and Beijing; to translate selected English works into Chinese; and to award small research grants for women scholars and activists in China. The results of the project will be compiled and published in a book in China.

The main purpose of the project is to promote and strengthen the connection between the women's studies community and developmental program people who are working closer to the grass-roots in poor and/or ethnic areas in China, which could mutually benefit both communities in general and empower regional researchers and program people in particular.

All activities will be linked through:

• women's studies scholars at home and abroad participate in assessing poverty-alleviation endeavors;
• poverty-alleviation program people are exposed to theoretical perspectives of gender, ethnicity, and diversity;
• the approach of Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) will be used to facilitate the free exchanges of ideas, assessment, and planning among all participants;
• to call attention to understand the concept of diversity for all participants.

The Executive Board encourages CSWS' members to participate into the project. The translation sub-project needs more volunteers. The project will provide limited compensation to a translator. Interested members can contact MA yuanxi at 312-832-1934 or Yuanxi.ma@bakernet.com. Members, who have done research on gender, poverty, and rural development in China and are interested in attending one of the workshops listed above, are encouraged to submit your study to apply for an international travel fund to attend the Beijing seminar in November, 1998. In addition to the committed project staff, CSWS will support one more member to present his/her research at the Seminar. The preparation for the regional workshop is in progress.

CSWS members can also contribute papers on gender, poverty, and rural development in China to the book. If an article is in English, the project staff will translate it into Chinese. One of the purposes of the book sub-project is to facilitate exchanges and collaborations among our members and colleagues in China.

For more information on the workshops and book project, please contact WU xu at 801-538-7072 (O), 801-942-8209 (H), or e-mail wuxuutah@aol.com.

Announcement - Follow Up:
The Second Conference On Women And Development In China

The joint project between CSWS and the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences in 1997 has been very close to its end. The Nanjing University Press will publish a book in Chinese based on the presentations and discussions at the conference. The draft version of the English title of the book and table of content are provided below for your information. If you have comments on the translation or are interested to purchase the book, please contact Xu Wu at wuxuutah@aol.com.

The Second Conference on Women and Development in China, held in Nanjing, China, including this book, was a collaboration among the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, the Chinese Society for Women's Studies, and many women scholars and activists in China. The whole project was funded by the Ford Foundation.

Preface

I. Theoretical Exploration

• Feminism, Diversity, and the Importance of Local Studies (Xiaolan Bao)
• Challenge and Response: Critique on the Theoretical Development in British Women's Studies in the 1990s (Dongchao Min)
• An Analysis of Recent Western Scholarship on Gender Issues in China (Zheng Wang)
• Gender Characteristics and Essentialism (Yinghe Li)
• Concept and Theory of Patriarchy: Critiques and Theoretical Exploration (Esther Ngan-Ling Chow)
• Discussions

II. Development and Economy

• Gender and Development: Similarities and Differences Between "Women's Development" and "Women and Development" (Nihua Zhang)
• Survey on the Difficulties and Problems for Laid-off Women Workers to be Re-employed (Women Workers Department of All-China Federation of Trade Unions)
• Present and Future for Migrant Female Workers in Zhujiang Delta (Shen Tan)
• Study on Rural Women in the Process of "Leaving the Farm-work but not the Village". (Yihong Jin)
• Enhance Women's Role Through Networking: On Manchen Women's Collective (Lanyan Chen)
• Blue Jeans and Bankers: Some Important Gender Issues in Contemporary Global Economy and International Politics. (Hongjun Su)
• Women and Development (Xiaodong Ma)
• Women and Gender in the Process of Development (Xiaoyun Li)
• Discussions

III. Culture and Education

• Survey on Gender Consciousness and Gender Image in Mass Media (Bohong Liu)
• Mass Media and the Makings of Femininity (Xueping Zhong)
• Women's Appearance and Inner Being in the Commercialization of Culture: A Comparison Between a Chinese and an American Magazine (Yuanxi Ma)
• Looking Through the Surface: Study on the News Reports in Eight Major Newspapers (Yuan Feng)
• Gender Consciousness and the Media Profession (Guanghua Liu)
• Women's Image as a Cultural Carrier: Examining Female Roles in Television Shows From a Gender Perspective (Huiying Li)
• Survival and Development of Girls: A Field not to be Neglected (Jian Zhan)
• The Formation and Characteristics of Gender System in Ancient China (Fangqi Du)
• Discussion

IV. Women's Health

• From Empirical Study to Intervention: Reproductive Health Projects of the All-China Women's Federation (Yukun Hu)
• Break "the Silent Culture": Action Research on Prevention of Vaginitis Among Rural Women (Ping Xu)
• Research and Practice of Important Issues of Reproductive Health (Kaining Zhang)
• Reconstruction of Women's Health: Multi-Disciplinary Study and Practice (Wu Xu)
• Women's Health From a Gender Perspective: Introduction to The New Our Bodies Ourselves (Bohong Liu)
• Discussions

Announcement - Website

Now CSWS has an independent website! The URL is http://www.csws.org. The purpose of the website is to facilitate global communication for members. The website includes general information about the Society - its mission, background and activities; the Society's newsletter; membership application and directory; and Web resources. To protect our privacy, we have a password for the membership directory, which will be sent to you via email or newsletter. "Discussion Forum" is currently under construction. We need every member's participation in making this website truly our own. We need you to:

• make suggestions and comments for improvements
• bookmark the URL and market the site
• submit your favorite sites for the resources page
• send your biography and/or photo for the members page (recommended only)

Send the above to LI hui at dli@hq.row.com or call her at (301)963-6834 (H). If you have difficulties accessing the site, please also let her know.

Celebrate CSWS' 10th Anniversary

CALL FOR PAPERS

Reevaluation And Repositioning
Chinese Women And Development At The Threshold Of The New Century

Sponsored By
Chinese Society For Women's Studies In The U.S.
Harvard University Fairbank Center Gender Studies Group
Tufts University Women's Studies Program

Format: A conference with short presentations and active participation in discussions and dialogues by all attendees

Place: Boston, the United States

Time: March 10-11, 1999
On the eve of the new century as well as on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of CSWS, the three organizations plans to hold a conference on Chinese women's studies as a continuation of the many discussions, workshops, seminars, conferences that have taken place in the past decade, a summing up of our scholarship and activism and another new beginning for the new millennium.

Issues to Be Addressed
1. Chinese women's/gender studies in global and local contexts:

• Towards a feminist/gender studies theory(ies) with Chinese characteristics
• Tension and negotiation between Western feminism and Chinese "indigenous" feminism/gender studies
• Globalization and/vs. nativization of Chinese women's studies from western/Chinese feminist/gender perspectives

2. Women's/gender studies in Greater China (Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan):

• Conceptions and misconceptions
• Similarities and differences
• Collaboration and contention

3. Scope of feminist inquiries:

• Examination, expansion and complexity of women's agency role and empowerment issues
• Feminization of poverty/poverty alleviation
• Women's health and development/reproduction: concepts and issues
• Areas/disciplines that have not been or have less been visited

4. Positionality, point of departure and course of action:

Theoretical framework and activist strategies: role of scholarship influencing activist undertakings and activism agenda informing the scholarship

5. Growing up as women in different environments:

• Purposes of exploration of personal experience and encounters
• Necessity and urgency of this pursuit
• The individual woman and/vs. the collective (women's community and society at large)

6. Strategies and methodologies in the re-examination and repositioning process

7. Dissemination of gender/feminist studies in the immediate and personal environment

8. Action researches of women and development in China

Please send your abstract(s) for a panel discussion or individual paper and your contact information by October 1, 1998 to the following address:

MA yuanxi
405 N. Wabash Ave. #4005
Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: 312-832-1934 (H) 312-861-7972 (W)
Fax: 312-832-1935
E-mail: yuanxi.ma@bakernet.com

AAS

CSWS participated in the annual conference for the Association for Asian Studies held in March 27 - 30,1998 in Washington DC. The Society sponsored three panels (members also actively participated in other panels). The following is a brief account of the panel presentations.

Trends in Globalization vs./and Nativization of Chinese Women's Studies

Friday 8:30 am - 10:30 am Lincoln Room East

Organizer/Chair: Yuanxi Ma

Participants: Xiaolan Bao, Wu Xu, Xueping Zhong, Bohong Liu and Yihong Jin

The Roundtable was planned to be a brief report of the Nanjing Seminar on Women and Development sponsored by CSWS and the Academy of Social Sciences of Jiangsu Province held in July 1997 as well as a continuation of discussion on some of the issues concerning the title theme of the Roundtable. Besides the four participants (including the chair) (Xu Wu, Bao Xiaolan, Zhong Xueping and Ma Yuanxi) from CSWS, CSWS had invited two participants from China, one was Jing Yihong, the organizer of the Nanjing Seminar, and the other was Liu Bohong from the Research Institute of Women's Studies in Beijing.

The Roundtable was scheduled on March 27, 1998 at 8:30 in the morning. Since it was the first day of the panels, many people had not arrived yet. We were prepared to expect a small audience, if any (as some of us commented). It turned out that we had an audience of about fifty.

The presentations as well as the discussion afterwards addressed a series of theoretical and practical questions. They included a comparison of the value systems between the East and the West in theory and practice from a gender perspective and the influence of the different systems on the women's movement and women's studies in the two spheres; an analysis of the Chinese expression (frequently used nowadays): "connecting with the international tracks;" the dialectic relations between the local and global as seen in the significance of exchange of scholarship and experience; the realization of acting locally and thinking globally in the field of reproduction health in China; dialogue between third world feminists and western feminists on an equal footing; women's agency role and positionality; a survey and analysis of women's images in Chinese mass media and more. The discussion is always the best part.

The discussion of this Roundtable was no exception, which actually continued during the CSWS reception in the evening of the same day among CSWS members and attendees.

To Construct or To Be Constructed: Women's Bodies in the Heat of Contemporary Social Transformation

Friday, 1:00pm - 3:00pm International Ballroom East Organizer/Chair: Hui Li
Presenters: Kathleen Erwin, Yanmei Wei, Carol Fan
Discussant: Phyllis Palmer

China's rapid social transformation is dramatically changing the lives and representations of women. Focusing on women's sexuality, the papers of our three panelists addressed key social, literary, and linguistic discourses arising from contemporary Chinese women's active and passive responses to the flux of social change.

Kathleen Erwin, in "Mobilizing Women's Virtue: Discourses and Practices of Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Stability in Late 20th Century Shanghai," examined how social status and mobility intersect with notions of gender, place, and women's virtue to variously shape and constrain the sexual and marital practices of upwardly mobile and migrant women in cosmopolitan Shanghai. Erwin's paper was based on eleven months of fieldwork in Shanghai.

Yanmei Wei surveyed the changing representation of motherhood in 20th century Chinese women's literature, and argues that contemporary literary treatment of mother-daughter relationships is complicated and enriched by the presence of mother's desire and subjectivity.

Carol Fan, in "Construction of Gender Differences in Chinese," offered a textual and historical analysis of how Chinese language constructs and reflected gender identity and illuminated the relationship between emerging cultural modes and economic processes and their impact on women.

Red Leaves in the Ivory Tower: Women and Motif of Love in Traditional Chinese Literature and Painting

Saturday 8:30 am - 10:30 am Georgetown Room East Organizer/Chair: Daniel Hsieh
Presenters: Dali Tan, Daniel Hsieh, Qiu Qiu Sun, Chi-ying Alice Wang
Discussant: Stuart H. Sargent

Presentations: Li Qingzhou and the Women in the World of Shishuo Xinyu;

Fox's Progress: The Ascension of Fox Fairies in Liaozhai zhiyi;

Women Initiated Love Relations in Ming and Qing Novels and its Historical Significance;

Romantic Affection and the Paintings of Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and Tang Yin

'98 Membership Dues

We sent membership renewal forms to our members in March, 1998. However, because of the change of hands (board members) at that time, we did not make timely updates of the directory, and some of our membership renewal forms may have gone to some wrong addresses. We apologize for the inconvenience. For those who have not paid for 1998, please send them to:

LI hui
9921 J Gable Ridge Terrace
Rockville, MD 20850
USA
dli@hq.row.com
(301)963-6834