International Symposium Chinese Women Organizing: Looking Back, looking forward

International Symposium Chinese Women Organizing: Looking Back, looking forward

On July 05 and 06, 2010 the International Symposium Chinese Women Organizing: Looking Back, looking forward was held in Beijing. It was the follow up of the conference on Women Organizing in China held in Oxford in July 1999.

There were altogether more than 60 participants attending the conference among them quite a number of people having taken part in the Oxford conference 11 years ago. CANGO International Advisor Ms. Dagmar Woehlert has attended both conferences too.

The conference was hosted by the Center of Gender and Global Studies of Beijing Foreign Studies University in cooperation with the International Gender Studies Centre of Oxford University and Centre for International Cooperation of Free University of Berlin. Additionally it was sponsored by Ford Foundation.

During the past eleven years a lot of changes have happened internationally and in China in particular having an impact on women s and gender development. New issues have been on the agenda such as labor issues including increasing unemployment especially for women, migrant workers moving to big cities, new perspectives on gender problems have been developed etc. This has been reflected in the research topics and respective papers. Women s organizations in China have to face these new issues and find ways and means to tackle and include them in their work and projects. Of course, the China Women s Federation at all levels plays an important role in working on these questions. But there are also various other grass root and new women s organizations working in the field as well.

The conference included both, the presentations of international and Chinese academics and their latest research, but also those of NGO representatives thus showing the diversification, pluralism, obtained capacity and increased social impact of Chinese NGOs.

The two day conference was packed with presentations and interesting discussion. All participants agreed not to wait too long to organize the next conference on the topic of Chinese Women Organizing in order to meet the needs of exchange between the various stakeholders soon.