IRL - Women's rights in China today, 12/1/10.

URL; http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1451439/womens_rights_in_china_today.html


Women's rights in China today are not entirely well known to the rest of the world, because much of the information is classified as secret and not shared with the rest of the world. As a totalitarian state even today, where the Communist Party is the only political entity allowed to exist, this information isn't revealed. Since the 1980s it can be seen that China (given its increasing economy) has brought many people, including women, out of horrible conditions but not all women seemed to have benefitted.

Women's rights in China today, by law, sound good on paper; women have equality in marriage, education, rights and freedoms but in some rural areas these laws are ignored, and it is here that trafficking of women and children (especially girls) is a regular occurrence, as well as domestic abuse. Many of these cases are not dealt with either, so while women technically have all of the same rights as men, not all of them are able to enjoy these rights. Also, the One Child Policy affects women as well - baby girls are not valued the same way baby boys are and female newborns are often killed or abandoned, showing that there is not practiced equality between males and females. The One Child Policy also affects women further because to adhere to this policy, women are often forced to submit to abortions or sterilization, even if against their will.

This is related to what we have been studying in class in that in Mao's day and now, women technically did have rights and it would seem that they were treated equally; that is to say, on paper, men and women were equal, however in practice it is not always so. This is evident in the bias against daughters, the forcing of women to have abortions to adhere to the One Child Policy, and most horrifyingly, the trafficking of women and female children into the sex trade. The sexual aspect of this is actually carried over from the past, when brothels were set up by the CCP. It's horrifying but it's true.

This information is valuable because it demonstrates a clear continuity between the past and the present in China, and how women have rights that are often ignored and not carried out, and they are not truly treated as equal despite what the law says. However, since it does not include statistics and precise numerical data (which is ultimately a result of the fact that it is not released), this is a limitation to the reader's understanding, as we cannot get a clear picture of the extent of domestic abuse and human trafficking.