China has not always been seen as the most gender equal country, whether because of societal customs or implementing rules such as the One Child Policy and the Iron Fist Campaign, but world leaders from the Chinese UN have created a pledge of money to try to create gender equality in China by 2030. According to Women UN, with the lack of ideas that China has and the rate that they are going at currently, it will take them over 80 years to finish their plan. The issues of gender inequality in China are very different than those in the US, and many of the issues are regarding prostitution. When the Communist Party of China took power in the 1940’s, they had a plan to completely get rid of prostitution, but over time the government stopped being as strict, and by the 1980’s, prostitution had become a form of industry. Also because of the gender imbalance issues and following the One Child Policy, some men have taken prostitutes as wives.
China's president, Xi Jinping who has been known to be against women's rights activists, co-chaired the meeting with the UN when they made the decision to pledge the money, which created lots of controversy, and even sparked presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to tweet and call him "Shameless". While in the UN meeting, Jinping failed to mention the five women that he imprisoned this year for trying to speak out against sexual harassment on a public bus, but did get the attention of everyone attending the meeting by announcing his ten million dollar donation to UN Women, meant to finance poverty stricken children, and train women from third world countries. When someone finally made a comment about the women, Li Junhua, the Chinese foreign minister, commented saying that they were not being detained for being woman’s activists, but for breaking basic Chinese laws. The laws that these women were breaking were unidentified, making the story seem like a cover up. Switzerland pledged to take Jinxing's donation up to fifty million dollars, and 45 other countries have promised to take action, rather than giving money to support.
(https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/648099640714391552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
The idea of women not being able to protest for their rights, and having very little say in the rules that effect them goes along with the societal ideas in Handmaid's Tale. Although we have not finished the book, you can tell that the women in that society have to follow a very strict lifestyle, and lose freedom to express themselves in the way that they might choose to outside of their societal barriers.
Questions:
1. How do you think the rest of the UN and China will respond to this plan after finding out the president's past involvement with feminist movements?
2. Do you think this plan, with the very little details involved in it, will be successful?
3. Do you agree with UN Women that this plan will take longer than anticipated? Why?
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