All-China Women's Federation

All China Women's Federation
File:All-China Women's Federation.svg All-China Women's Federation Logo for the All China Women's Federation
Website	http://www.womenofchina.cn/

The All-China Women's Federation (Chinese:中华全国妇女联合会, pinyin: Zhōnghuá Quánguó Fuǹǚ Liánhéhuì), also known as the ACWF, is a women's rights organization established in China in March 1949. It was originally called the All-China Democratic Women's Foundation, and in 1957 it was renamed the All-China Women's Federation. It has acted as the official leader of the women’s movement in China since its founding, and is responsible for promoting government policies on women, and protecting women’s rights within the government.

History of the All China Women’s Federation

Pre-1949: Women’s Movement prior to the CCP and Predecessors

The early women’s movement in China focused on eradicating the assumption that women were inferior to men. The early reformers believed that women needed help to improve their own attitudes about themselves, since even the women themselves generally found themselves to be inferior to men.The CCP had already shown its interest in the women’s movements. During the 2nd National congress in 1922 the CCP issued a statement arguing for the end of Chinese traditions that repress women. The CCP also released a document ensuring equality under the law for both men and women, and guaranteeing equal pay for both genders during the 3rd National Congress. When the CCP entered the United Front with the GMD, the parties established a women’s department, but after the White Terror, the ideas about liberating Chinese women were only permitted within the soviets under CCP rule, while the GMD focused on more traditional Confucian views of women. The CCP’s time in the soviets also gave them the opportunity to practice organizing federations and governing, which would aid them in founding the ACWF later. . The Chinese women’s movement gained a new energy with the Second Sino-Japanese war that began in 1937. It sparked nationalist feelings within the women’s movement, who believed that women should be liberated to support the country through the invasion. The number of official women’s organization within the CCP at Yan’an grew during the invasion. An example of the nationalist tone within the women’s movement was visible In March of 1938 at the First Women’s Congress held by the Women’s Federation of Shan-Gan-Ning (a forerunner to the ACWF). The women in attendance stated the goal of the women’s movements should be to unite women, so they can work together to liberate China. The women also outlined goals such as: helping women escape abusive marriages, improving women’s health, eradicating the practice of foot binding, ending domestic abuse, and protecting women’s inheritance rights. Many of these goals would be continued by the ACWF.

1949-1966: Founding and Early Years

The All China Democratic Women’s Federation was established in 1949 as this first country-wide women’s organization, and is the forerunner to the ACWF. Women who had been dominate in the women’s movement and the CCP were included in the federation’s leadership and Cai Chang, a prominent leader in the women’s movement and a active CCP member having participated on the Long March, was the first chair of the organization. The organization began as a federation of women’s groups with dual goals of building a socialist China and promoting the status of women in China. The ACWF went beyond promoting gender, and was a tool used by the part to mobilize women for economic, political and idealogical motives. The beginning stages of the organization was characterized by ideology focusing entirely on Marxism-Leninism. The women’s movement was considered a subset of the Chinese revolution at large, but critics argued that most of the women continued domestic work, and therefore were not active members of the revolution, contradicting the Marxist-Leninist ideology the ACWF was touting. The ACWF contested this assertion, stating the economic conditions were not at the point where jobs could be provided to all women. Therefore, housekeepers, wives and mothers who were dedicated to their work could indeed be seen as contributing to socialism. To emphasize the contribution of women, the Five Good Family Campaign was introduced in 1956 to acknowledge the contributions women were making to families in areas such as education, managing the household, establishing connections with neighbors, keeping the house clean, and self improvement. Promoting this campaign and ideology was important to the ACWF, so the ACWF encouraged local chapters to form women’s congresses to spread the message. By 1953, there were over 40,000 officials working to spearhead local organizing campaigns. Around 1957, the ACWF entered a new phase as the federation was formally included in the party structure, entering the administrative hierarchy of the state, and formally declaring itself a mass organization. The inclusion formally into the PRC altered some of the duties of the ACWF. The ACWF was now responsible for spreading political propaganda among women, guaranteeing the inclusion of women in political campaigns as a watchdog, marketing the campaigns to Chinese women, and organizing parades, meetings and demonstrations so women could participate in campaigns. The CCP sought to use the ACWF to promote its gender-specific ideas and create a formal channel to mobilize women. The ACWF also established affiliations with other mass movements: The YWCA of China and the Women Personnel Section of the Trade Union. In addition to this, the ACWF played an important role internationally for the CCP. As a communist country in the Cold War, China was having difficulty establishing diplomatic connections. ACWF was able to reach out to women’s movements in other countries, and even hosted 23 delegations from other countries for the Asia Women’s Representative Conference in December of 1949. This enabled the PRC connection to foreign countries around the diplomatic blockade. However, soon the Cultural Revolution would being in China, which would force to ACWF to discontinue many of its policies.

1966-1976: The ACWF and the Cultural Revolution

As with the rest of the ideology constructed during the Cultural Movement, the women’s movement developed to focus on Mao Zedong, and he was viewed as the only legitimate source to base the ideology of the women’s movement on. During the Cultural Revolution the women’s movement was viewed as bourgeoisie since it had originated in the west. The ACWF closed in 1968 since it was seen as anti-revolutionary. The revolutionary stance was that the women’s movement needed to be completely emerged in the revolutionary movement instead of operating for its own self interest. The offices of the ACWF were occupied by the army and many of the female cadres who had been involved with the women’s movement were sent to do labor in the countryside. National level women’s work ceased to function until the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976. The committee for the Fourth National Women’s Congress began to rehabilitate many of the female cadres sent to the countryside, and began to reestablish the ACWF. The reestablishment was completed in September of 1978 and the ACWF soon announced support for the Four Modernizations. Following its reestablishment, the ACWF was able to strengthen its ability to set up local chapters , but, while other federations had been able to resume work in the early 1970s, the ACWF was not able to resume complete national work until 1978.

1976-Present: Economic Opening and Change to NGO Status

Following the Cultural Revolution, the ACWF began to prioritize protecting women’s rights and promoting equality over its responsibilities as an organ of the party. While the ACWF was responsible for communicating how the CCP had helped the women’s movement, they also began to critique the previous actions taken during the women’s movement as having been unsuccessful in the face of China’s dominate patriarchy. The ACWF began to increasingly study women’s movements in other countries, and hold debates beyond the parameters the CCP had previously enforced. ACWF campaigns became increasingly diverse as they attempted to meet the needs of the urban population and the rural population. While the ACWF continues remain with the party line, it is no longer involved in mass political campaigns. It was officially declared in the early 1990s as a supervisory body that analyzes the effectiveness of the government. It was also approved run business that made profit in 1992, which made it less reliant on government financing, and therefore it gained more freedom in setting its own ideology. That ideology turned towards focusing on what women thought of themselves, and the ACWF launched the Four Self Campaign consisting of: self respect, self confidence, self improvement, and self reliance. An example of the ACWF balancing its government responsibilities with its responsibility to the women of China can be seen in the One Child Policy. The ACWF was responsible for publicizing the police and its content, but the ACWF questioned if the policy respected the rights of women. In the end, the ACWF settled on requesting that its cadres comply with the law to set a good example for the country, promoting the policy and its contents to Chinese women, and strongly condemning any coercive action related to the policy. The ACWF also expand its legal training for cadres, strengthened its finances, became involved with gay rights, fought employment discrimination and female trafficking, and introduced legislation to meet the challenges faced by women. In 2000, ACWF developed jobs for one million unemployed women by creating small economic (for profit) entities in which women can work as family service aides or in women's service groups. The organization also helps China's "leftover" women. These are women who remain unmarried after the age of 27. ACWF offers them alternatives to marriage such as the opportunity to pursue an education. With these types of changes, the ACWF became less concerned with mobilizing grass roots organization, and focused on its role in setting the public discourse for the social and political women’s issues By 1994 the organization had over 68,000 branches and somewhere between 80,000 and 90,000 cadres. By 1995 the ACWF was declared, at least nominally, a non-governmental organization, though the validity of that declaration has been contested. However, while the federation had expand, it became increasingly difficult to continue to reach all of China’s women through traditional channels. Other organizations have formed to fill some of the voids, but many of those become incorporated within the federation. By the end of the 1900s there were 6,386 women’s associations and recreational clubs under the ACWF umbrella. Groups outside the ACWF umbrella, the NGO status of the ACWF, and reaching the increasingly diverse female population in China have continued to be a sources of controversy and problems for the ACWF moving forward.

All China Women’s Federation as an Organization

Actions and Organizations

The main action of the ACWF is funu gongzuo (women’s work). The federation currently has seven functional departments to carry out this work: the Department for Children, the International Liaison Department, the Department for Women’s Development, the Publicity Department, the Department for Women’s Rights and Interests, the Human Resources Development Department and the General Office. The ACWF maintains a strong connection to the CCP through the women’s committees in the government that cover topics ranging from systems of education, science, arts and medicine. The party still does have direct control over some aspects of the ACWF since cadres that work within the federation may be receiving a government salary, and they can recommend promotions. The ACWF also has many affiliated organizations that expand its influence including: the China Women’s Development Foundation, Marriage and Family Magazine, the Legal Assistance Center of the ACWF, the China Women’s Activity Center, the China Women’s University, the China Women’s News, the China Women’s Publishing House, Women of China Magazine Publishing House. Many of these affiliated organizations help distribute information to the women of China. The ACWF has over 49 newspapers and magazines, and major debates about the women’s movement occur in its national journals the Women of China, Chinese Women’s Movements, and Collection of Women’s Studies.

Structure

Interaction with Chinese Communist Party

Though the ACWF is officially labeled a NGO, its longstanding relationship with the CCP means the party still has interests in the federation and its members. The four levels of the federation still coincide with the state administrative system. The highest ranking body is the National Congress of Women which meets every five years. When they meet they are expected to study reports sent to them from the Executive Committee, decide the goals for the women’s movements, make changes to the constitution, and to elect the Executive Committee and Standing Committees. Under this national level, the local level’s women’s congresses meet every three years to select their Executive and Standing Committees. However the local level must also carry out the directive and report to the CCP committee in addition to following the ACWF. This is supposed to give the organization a dual structure of carrying out party orders and informing the government of women’s interests.

Grass Root versus Upper Levels of the ACWF

The ACWF is run from the national level with the provincial, municipal, county, district and village levels below it. However it is considered a nominal hierarchal structure because the Party has control of each level instead of being under the control of the ACWF level. Instead of direct control, the higher levels provide guidance, ideas, and trainings to the levels below it. Some members have complained about perceived problems with the system stating that women trained by the party are promoted more rapidly than women trained by the ACWF. Due to this perceived promotion rate, the grass roots members are incentivized follow the demands of the party instead of the demands of the ACWF. Other members of the ACWF believe that the grassroots structure is successfully in touch with the women they are working for since they are on the front lines of the movement, and see little problem with the disconnect between the upper levels of the party and grassroots levels.

Relationship with the Women’s Movement

One of the problems that the ACWF has identified is that women in China do not understand the federation’s contributions, and it’s significance in the women’s movement. The members of the ACWF have identified two potential sources for the lack of understanding. The first is that the ACWF has many roles and branch organizations which may be obscuring the contribution it is making. The second is that it has lacked consistency in how it has represented women, especially during its early years. Another problem facing the ACWF is its relationship with the international women’s movement. The relationship between the Marxism view of feminism and current international views on feminism are often viewed as contradictory. The ACWF struggles with how to engage both, sometimes denying to have borrowed anything from international feminism.

Challenges Facing the All China Women’s Federation

Cooperation with Outside Women’s Groups

The ACWF is the largest women’s organization in China and is the only women’s organization still in existence that existed before the 1980s. However, the ACWF has recently been struggling to adequately represent a diverse range of women’s interest, and some critics believe that women’s growing needs need to be represented by a more diverse group of organizations. Most NGOs operating in China are currently listed under the ACWF and have sought a close relationship with the ACWF to gain legitimacy and protection. Some of the organizations that are listed outside the ACWF are run by women who are affiliated with the ACWF, so there is considerable overlap. New women's groups have more freedom in exploring sensitive topics and alternative theories on gender because they are not affiliated with the government in any manner. The ACWF has encouraged some of these groups to form, and brought others under their umbrella, which extends the reach of the ACWF. However, given the limited resources available to the women’s movement, and the ACWF being accustomed to being the only large organization, tensions exists between these women’s groups and the ACWF.

NGO Status

The state officially labeled the ACWF a NGO in 1995, however how applicable the term NGO is to the ACWF has been contested, given the ACWF’s long and continuing relationship with the CCP. Some leaders in the women’s movement were against the ACWF attending an NGO forum in Manila in 1993 because they believed it did not meet the NGO criteria. Even the ACWF hesitates using the term NGO within China because it has been linked to anti-government groups, although it has embraced the title internationally. International donor agencies generally are more likely to work with NGO, so the classification of an NGO has helped the ACWF find financing from international organizations. Others believe the ACWF classifies as an NGO because it has separated itself from the government in recent years, and still others believes the ACWF could be classified as a NGO if the definition was broadened. Those is support of this modified stance believe that complete separation from the government would be impossible and harmful to the ACWF. The ACWF continues to have internal and external debates about the NGO title.

See also

• Chinese women in space
• Women's healthcare in China
• Government-operated non-governmental organization (GONGO)

External links

• Official website
• English website