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Leta Hong Fincher

Democracies around the world are grappling with the global rise of authoritarian rulers such as Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Xi Jinping of China.
The first public hearing of the US House Intelligence Committee under the Democratic Party majority on February 26 dealt with the threat of rising authoritarianism and warned that liberal democracies are facing their most serious crisis in decades. 
Left unsaid at the hearing was a discussion of one of the most potent weapons democracies have to check the power of autocrats: feminism.
Anyone concerned about the rise of the “strongman” should pay attention to how feminist activists in China are posing an unprecedented challenge to the patriarchal, authoritarian state.

This International Women’s Day marks the fourth anniversary of the Chinese government’s detention of five young women who became known as the “Feminist Five”.
In 2015, Chinese authorities jailed the women for planning to hand out stickers against sexual harassment on public transport. Although Chinese authorities released the women after 37 days, they began a systematic crackdown on feminist activism, which continues to this day.
In 2018, the #MeToo hashtag on sexual harassment was one of the top 10 censored topics on China’s popular messaging app, WeChat, according to the University of Hong Kong’s WeChatscope.
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Weibo and WeChat also banned China’s most influential feminist social media account, Feminist Voices. Authorities have closed down prominent women’s rights centres. They have also detained students and recent graduates advocating for #MeToo and workers’ rights.
Just as China’s crackdown on women’s rights activism is growing, the global backlash against feminism is likely to intensify, as misogynistic autocrats have been emboldened everywhere, in part by a US president who openly  expresses admiration  for “strongman” rulers.
On February 19, more than two dozen female world leaders released an open letter urging the international community to fight against the global erosion of women’s rights.
“Now we collectively call attention to the need to achieve full gender equality and empowerment of women across all ambits of society,” says the letter, signed by prominent women leaders such as Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark and Susana Malcorra, the former Argentinian foreign minister.

Why are authoritarian rulers so threatened by feminism? The subjugation of women is a common feature in virtually all authoritarian regimes.
Putin signed a law in 2017 that partially decriminalised domestic violence in Russia, making it much more difficult for women to report abuse.
In Hungary, the autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban has banned gender studies programmes at universities. Putin, Orban and Xi, among others, are fixated on pushing women into more traditional roles in the home and having more babies for the state.
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Since the Chinese government abolished its “one-child policy” at the beginning of 2016, it has aggressively promoted a new two-child policy, urging women – especially college-educated, Han Chinese women – to marry and have children as soon as possible to address its demographic crises of falling birth rates, a severely ageing population and a shrinking workforce.
People’s Daily online, for example, has run articles with headlines such as, “You’d Better Believe it! Under-30 are Women’s Best Child-Bearing Years!”
Remarkably, even in the face of an intense crackdown, China’s feminist networks are still growing. Young women’s rights activists are posing a unique challenge not only to China’s authoritarian regime; they are confronting patriarchal authoritarianism in other countries as well.
Women around the world are rising up in new ways (including #MeToo) to demand basic rights. When feminist activists take up issues that directly affect the daily lives of millions of ordinary women, such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence and gender discrimination in the workplace and in schools, even the world’s most powerful authoritarian state – China – struggles to quash the movement.


Far too often, women in resistance movements are overlooked by journalists and the narrative revolves around male opposition figures.
Yet more young women in authoritarian states have become fed up with the misogyny in their daily lives, demanding equality, dignity and an end to pervasive gender-based violence.
Young women standing up for their rights pose a growing challenge to male autocrats everywhere – not just in China – which is why authoritarian rulers are so threatened by the prospect of any large-scale women’s movement developing.
Male autocrats see patriarchal authoritarianism as crucial for their political survival, but one of the core demands of feminism – that women should be free to control our own bodies and reproductive lives – is in direct conflict with the coercive, often pronatalist policies of authoritarian states, which see declining birth rates as an existential crisis. And that is exactly what is happening in China.
Chinese women ‘hold up half the sky’, for 20 per cent less pay
In spite of the new, two-child policy, there were just over 15 million new births in 2018 in China, down 11 per cent from the previous year. Young Chinese women are increasingly recoiling from the intense pressure of heterosexual marriage and child-rearing pushed by government propaganda.
Even though we are living at a time of great peril, this should also be a time of hope. I believe that, in the long run, women’s rights movements around the world – if given the right support – will lead to more open societies. We must support beleaguered feminist activists and fight for women’s rights everywhere.
Leta Hong Fincher is the author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, and Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. She is the first American to receive a PhD from Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology in Beijing


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epa07356413 President of Ethiopia Sahle-Work Zewde (L) arrives to attend a launching of a new initiative aimed at increasing commitment for health across Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 09 February 2019. African heads of state and business leaders gathered in Addis Ababa to launch a new initiative aimed at increasing commitment for health across Africa ahead of the 32nd African Union Summit to be held 10 till 12 February. EPA-EFE/STR

Clockwise from top left: Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Zheng Churan, Wei Tingting, Wang Man - The five, all aged 32 or younger, were taken into custody shortly before International Women's Day last month as they were preparing to hand out leaflets about sexual harassment on public transport in Beijing, China. The European Union, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton had all issued calls for their freedom, while Beijing said it was an internal issue. All five were released on Monday 14 April, 2015, which mainland criminal lawyers said was the deadline for prosecutors to formally charge them. (Amnesty International/EyePress) Photo: AFP/EYEPRESS [POSTMAGAZINE 2018]

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Opinion

From China to Russia and Hungary, there is a very clear overlap between the embrace of strongman rule and the erosion of women’s rights


From China to Russia and Hungary, there is a very clear overlap between the embrace of strongman rule and the erosion of women’s rights.


China society

Families in China

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


This International Women’s Day, support liberal democracy by defending women’s rights against authoritarianism

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}From China to Russia and Hungary, there is a very clear overlap between the embrace of strongman rule and the erosion of women’s rights

From China to Russia and Hungary, there is a very clear overlap between the embrace of strongman rule and the erosion of women’s rights