Table of Contents

I. CSWS New Board for New Millennium
II. Call for CSWS Project Participations
III. Call for Papers for Taiwan Conference
IV. Achievements and Career Moves by CSWS Members
V. Opinions
VI. World Bank PRR on Gender and Development Update
VII. Welcome New Members
VIII. CSWS Membership Renewal

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I. CSWS new Board for NEW millennium

In March, 2000, The Chinese Society for Women's Studies (CSWS) held an election. The new board for the CSWS consists of:

Co-Chairs: HSIUNG Ping-Chun, pchsiung@scar.utoronto.ca

WEI Yanmei, yanmei@andrew.cmu.edu

Newsletter Editor: ZUO Jiping, soczuo@stcloudstate.edu

Website Manager: LI Hui, dawnli@learninusa.com

Treasurer: LI Zongmin, zli@guilford.edu

The new board took over at the Association for Asian Studies convention, March

9th-March 12th, San Diego. This board will be in office from March, 2000 to March, 2002, at which time another election will be held to select the next board.

Letter from the new board--

Dear CSWS members:

During its tenure, we will continue to oversee the development of the ongoing projects while proposing new initiatives to expand the activity and influence of the society. Since its establishment in 1989, the CSWS has grown into a major facilitator for the development of Chinese women's studies as well as gender and development in China. After over a decade of rapid growth, the society would like to invite all members to assess and define the future directions of the CSWS. We will launch an e-forum on the society's website to start the brainstorming process. Through this and other initiatives, we hope to encourage even more member involvement in society's affairs. In addition, we will also collaborate with scholars and activities in China to develop more gender perspective programs. We look forward to working with you all!

II. CALL FOR CSWS PROJECT PARTICIPATIONS

Project #1: Develop Women and Gender Studies in China. This is a five-year project funded by the Ford Foundation. A group of scholars from universities and academies of social sciences in China is leading this project that currently has four programs: Gender and History, Gender and Sociology, Gender and Pedagogy, and Introduction to Gender Studies. The goal of the project is to develop women and gender studies curriculum in higher education in China. In order to train university faculty to create courses on women and gender and to produce textbooks for such courses, each program is responsible for organizing seminars and training sessions in their respective field. The program "Introduction to Gender Studies" aims at promoting interdisciplinary work among women's studies scholars in China as well as producing a textbook for a course in this nature. The project requires support from the CSWS and other women's studies scholars

abroad. This year Gender and History program will run two seminars in China and each of the other three programs will organize one seminar. From July 5 to July 21, a

group of project leaders will come to University of Maryland to attend a summer

institute on women's studies. They are: Du Fangqin from Tianjin Normal University, Zheng Xinrong from Beijing Normal University, Deng Xiaonan and Tong Xin from Beijing University, Li Huiying from the Central Party School, Han Henan and Liu Meng from the Chinese Women's College, Cai Yiping from the Chinese Women's Daily, and Wang Jinling from Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences. CSWS members are encouraged to go to UM to meet with these scholars as well as join their planning for seminars in each program to be held in China. For more information, please visit the CSWS website and CSWS Forum (www.csws.org) where Dr. Wang Zheng, the international coordinator, described the contents of the project in detail and suggested the areas in which the CSWS members may contribute to the project in two of her letters to CSWS members sent around two months ago.

Project #2: Guizhou Project on Gender, Ethnicity, and Community Development. The Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences, the Southwest Minority Women’s Studies Group, and CSWS is jointly organizing a project focusing on gender, ethnicity, and community development in China, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. The project includes four components:

1. training on gender planning and analysis in the context of minority cultures in Guiyang, Chengdu, and Lijiang during Summer 2000;
2. conducting, evaluating, and promoting action-research projects on minority women and community development in minority areas in 2000-2001;
3. organizing a conference on gender, ethnicity, and community development in Guizhou, Summer 2001;
4. publishing translations of ethnicity and gender studies in August 2000 and a conference proceedings in 2001.

This project will provide opportunities to the scholars with diverse ethnical and gender background and developmental personnel from Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, other areas in China and abroad to exchange and share their understandings of the intersection effects of gender, ethnicity, class in the context of community development. The project planning committee will publish a "call for paper" in the coming CSWS newsletter to invite the CSWS members to participate into the Guizhou conference in 2001. For more information contact XU Wu at wuxuutah@aol.com. (XU Wu, Co-Project Director)

III. CALL FOR PAPERS FOR TAIWAIN CONFERENCE

The Fourth East Asian Women's Forum is calling for submission of papers for its conference to be held in Taipei, September 4-7, 2000. Individuals can send in their abstracts now on any of the topics listed. They still haven't given any deadline and just said as soon as possible. The abstracts are to be sent to the 4th East Asian Women's Forum by fax (no street or e-mail address given) at (886-2)23632669. For more information, please fax by the given number.

IV. Achievements AND CAREER MOVES by CSWS Members

Congratulations to Siqin Yang for having been admitted in the program of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at University of Minnesota! Siqin Yang is currently a MA student in the Women's Studies Program at University of Northern Iowa. She has also won the honored the Excellent Graduate Assistant Award for the year of 2000 by her program.

LI Hui, the CSWS website manager, has joined a group of entrepreneurs to strengthen private education in China by utilizing U.S. educational resources. She is in charge of

providing and managing the web content and technology for the website Learn in USA.com (http://www.learninusa.com). Accompanied with on-the-ground services, the website offers comprehensive bilingual information, advice, and services to Chinese students and adult learners who wish to pursue a U.S. education.

V. OPINIONS

"The Role of CSWS in Women's Education"-- Opinion on Future Tasks of CSWS

Education for women is critical for gender-consciousness. It is important to develop multicultural gender education with Chinese characteristics in China. CSWS may help engender the overall educational system in China. Information on overseas women's educational organizations needs to be introduced to China, such as AAUW (The American Association of University Women), IFUW (International Federation of University Women). Chinese university women should play more important roles in the society, which depends on their knowledge in gender perspective. CSWS may conduct gender projects in collaboration with women's studies programs abroad. It may also establish relationships with international programs at higher education to develop student and scholar exchange program in Women's Studies. In a word, CSWS needs to serve as an international bridge to facilitate Chinese women's education in China as well as elsewhere.

Siqin Yang

Women's Studies Program

University of Northern Iowa

VI. World Bank PRR on gender and development update

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, over the past year a policy research report (PRR) on gender and development has been under preparation at the World Bank. The purpose of the report is to strengthen the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of the link between gender, public policy, and development outcomes. Background information on the report is available on our website http://www.worldbank.org/gender/prr. We are writing to update you on recently posted working papers and to alert you to an upcoming electronic discussion on the PRR draft.

NEW WORKING PAPERS!

To help build the existing literature on gender and development, we commissioned a number of background papers on selected topics. Some of these papers have been available on our website in the past months and we hope you have found them useful. We are pleased to announce the posting of several new papers in our Working Paper Series on our website: http://www.worldbank.org/gender/prr/workingp.html

No. 7: Does Gender Inequality Reduce Growth and Development? Evidence from

Cross-Country Regressions

By Stephan Klasen

No. 8: Gender Earnings Differentials: The European Experience

By Patricia Rice

No. 9: Towards a Feminist Politics? The Indian Women?s Movement in Historical

Perspective

By Samita Sen

No. 10: Effects of Child Care Prices on Women's Labor Force Participation in Russia

By Michael M. Lokshin

No. 11: Consumption Expenditure and Female Poverty: A Review of the Evidence

By Julian A. Lampietti and Linda Stalker

UPCOMING ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION ON THE PRR DRAFT!

A draft of the Policy Research Report, Engendering Development, has been completed recently and will be available on our website on May 22, 2000 for discussion and comment. We are pleased to invite you to join an electronic discussion on the draft. The online discussion, co-sponsored by the World Bank's Development Research Group, Gender and Development Group and the World Bank Institute, will be held from May 29 to June 30, 2000. The discussion is open to individuals and groups in civil society, governments, aid agencies, bilateral and multilateral development organizations and academia. We seek your views and expertise to help inform revisions on the draft. Our hope is to benefit from an exchange of comments on various parts of the report, including our analyses of the state of gender inequality today, the relevance of gender to development, and the role of public policy, civic action and donor support. We expect that the report, to be published in the Fall of 2000, will be a better one for this discussion.

If you would like to participate, please send a blank e-mail to

join-prr@lists.worldbank.org. For more information, please visit http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/forum_prr.html. We will be sending an email soon describing how this discussion will be conducted.

Thank you again for your interest in our work. Please feel free to pass this along to colleagues or friends who may be interested. We also invite you to send us your comments regarding the website, any documents on the site, and the PRR as a whole. Please send your e-mails to Gender_PRR@worldbank.org. If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please let us know at the same address.

Best regards,

Beth King, Andy Mason, and the PRR Team

(forwarded by Dr. Yiching Song, Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands)

VII. WELCOME NEW MEMBERS

We warmly welcome the following two new members of CSWS:

CHANG Shirley, Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature. Her area of specialization is in Women’s autobiography of modern China. Her current research project is on famale knight-errant characters in Tang Dynesty (618-907).

MA Linying, Research Associate at Sichuan Research Institute of

Ethnical Studies, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences. She is one of the

leading persons in Southwest Minority Women's Studies Group and the Sichuan

sub-project leader for the Guizhou Project.

VIII. CSWS MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL

Those who have not paid their membership dues for the year 2000, please fill out below the Membership Renewal Form and send it to the designated address on the form. Thank you.

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION AND RENEWAL FORM

Name (English and Chinese): _______________________Dues for: 2000

Referred By: ___________________________________

Annual membership dues are based on the following scale (circle one):

Annual Income ($)	Dues ($)
25,000 or under	15
25,000 - 45,000	30
45,000 or more	45
Institutional Member	65
Friend of the Society	_______
Donation	_______
Total	_______

Please make checks payable to CSWS. Members residing outside of the continental U.S. are assessed $25.00 dues irrespective of income. Women's groups with limited resources may apply for a waiver. Dues for members residing in mainland China are waived.

Address or Change of Address

Home: ___________________________________________________

Phone: _______________________Fax: ________________________

Institute/Office:_____________________________________________

Phone: _______________________Fax:________________________

E-mail: _________________________________________

Send mailings to (circle one): Home Address or Office Address

Status/Position or Change of Status (circle one)

Undergraduate | Master Program | Ph.D candicate | Professor | Instructor | Other Field: _____________________________________________________________________

Topics of Interest:_______________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________

Current Projects: ________________________________________________________

Please complete the form and mail with your dues of membership and/or renewal to:

XU Wu 1446 E. 6710 S. Salt Lake City, UT 84121, USA

Tel: (801) 942-8209 Fax: (801) 942-5918 E-Mail: wuxuutah@aol.com

_______________________________________________________________________

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