|
||||||||
|
Susan Li Faculty of Law Yesterday Professor Wright spoke from a western perspective, and since I come from China I will speak about women's rights in China. I agree with what she said about colonisation. As a person from a non-european country, individuality is based on a model of white, male European individualism. In the context of the Chinese culture, individual rights in traditional Chinese society was a concept that did not exist. China regarded itself as the centre of the world, where the emperor was regarded as the sun of the heaven. The emperor wanted to advance his will and everyone was to obey him, so there was no such thing as individual rights in Chinese history. With regard to women's rights, traditional attitudes towards women was based on a feudal ethical code which regarded women as having no intelligence. There were three rules to this code of ethics: unmarried women were to obey their fathers, married women were to obey their husbands, and widowed women were to obey their sons. Under civil law women had no property rights, women had no power in either marriage or divorce as all marriages were pre arranged and divorce was considered taboo in Chinese culture. Practices such as female infanticide and footbinding were also very popular and reinforced the powerlessness of women. Within this traditional perspective women had no power or rights and the ethical code defined women as both sex objects and reproducing machines. As this attitude existed for such a long time in China, even today the attitude of Chinese men to Chinese women is still impacted by this traditional thinking. Another question that I wanted deal with was what standards are to be asserted to be universally binding? Different countries have different circumstances. For instance, in China there is no race issue and therefore women's rights become very significant. We all know that the standards were set by western countries, so I think we need to be careful when applying them to different countries. For instance, there was a lot of criticism of the Chinese population control policy as it was seen as discriminatory as it restricted women's rights to only allowing them to have one child. However, I think that this policy must be analyzed in accordance to Chinese culture and cultural relativism should be applied here. Finally, I will speak a little bit about the current status of women's rights in China. China adopted its first protective law in 1992, and last year adopted a health care law for mothers and children. This includes health care for women before they get married, during pregnancy and nursing periods. In practice there are many problems with these laws as they are drafted in very general terms, and detailed regulations are needed. In terms of the recent economic reforms that occurred in China, women's rights were impeded again. This reform was aimed at raising efficiency, so it exposed women to competition which they were not prepared for. The establishment of a market economy has resulted in social changes which has allowed some of the older firms to resort once again to exploitation. Generally women's rights in China are in the very primitive stages because their is a lot of problem with the implementation of new policies. I hope that the women's conference being held in Beijing this year will aid in progressing the movement and that in the future we will see some improvements of women's rights.
|
|||||||
 |
© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University |
|||||||
