Yige Dong: Impossible Sisterhood? The Bifurcation of Gender Politics in Contemporary China

About This Event

Yige Dong, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, SUNY Buffalo

Recent political and social change in China has given rise to a contradictory picture of its gender politics. On the one hand, entrepreneurial and professional women have been increasingly vocal in expressing their demands for more rights in the workplace and other avenues of social life. On the other hand, trafficking of and violence against women are happening on a daily basis and those who are suffering are deprived of power to speak for themselves. At the same time when the state glorifies China’s first female astronaut walking in space, it stifles activists fighting for gender justice on the ground.

This talk maps out this ongoing bifurcation of gender politics in contemporary China and analyzes the structural conditions underlying such a predicament. It concludes by reflecting on the strategies for and challenges of building feminist solidarity in this context.

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