Description

This book documents and examines the emergence of a civil society-led women's anti-domestic violence movement in contemporary People's Republic of China within the global context of transnational feminist advocacy activism against gender violence. It focuses on the construction of the Network/Research Center for Combating Domestic Violence (DVN), a new women s NGO in Beijing with an unprecedented and exclusive focus on the issue of domestic violence in China. My case study finds that, for anti-domestic violence activism in the civil society sector of China, the processes of the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 and the international donors who fund Chinese women s NGOs are particularly important. However, Chinese woman have not been passive followers of their Western sisters, nor is violence against women an imposed agenda. For DVN activists, mobilizing against domestic violence and establishing a specialized NGO to address this issue went beyond the goal of combating domestic violence. Evidence comes primarily from archival research, observations, and interviews with DVN activists.