Seven global trends to watch in 2019
Crusading for women’s rights in patriarchal ChinaBy Ann Scott Tyson/ Correspondent
Lü Xiaoquan knows firsthand the risks of advocating for women’s empowerment in China. The young lawyer has faced detention, threats from irate husbands, and political pressure in his quest to advance women’s rights.
Mr. Lü’s professional challenges underscore the obstacles preventing a #MeToo movement from catapulting change in China, despite growing visibility and support among women here. “It goes without saying that the #MeToo movement is sensitive in China,” Lü says at his women’s rights law office in a high-rise apartment in north Beijing.
The first wave of #MeToo awareness swept China in January 2018, Lü says. Inspired by the #MeToo outcry in the United States, Luo Xixi, a graduate of Beihang University in Beijing, published an open letter online detailing sexual harassment a decade earlier by a professor, her former doctoral adviser. The professor denied the allegations, but a month later the university fired him after determining he had sexually harassed several students. Ms. Luo urged Chinese women who’ve faced harassment to speak out and say “no.”
That spurred thousands of students at dozens of Chinese universities to support petitions calling on school administrators to establish anti-sexual-harassment guidelines. More victims came forward, and a few prominent men lost their jobs.
“A trend began to develop,” says Lü, as “these waves enlightened some victims.”
Lü welcomes the heightened awareness, having spent the past decade fighting for women’s rights. Raised in a poor household in southern Hunan province, Lü graduated with a master’s degree in law from Beijing Forestry University in 2008 and joined the Beijing Qianqian Law Firm, where he is now executive director.
In the past 10 years, Lü’s firm has handled about 500 cases related to women’s rights, including many involving victims of domestic violence. They have also run workshops training an estimated 3,000 people – including police officers and court officials – on sexual harassment, domestic violence, and gender equality.
Still, Lü has grappled with entrenched opposition rooted in China’s traditional, patriarchal culture; a lack of legal protections for women; and political controls that he says are blocking a full-fledged #MeToo campaign. China, where surveys show a majority of women face sexual harassment, ranks 100th among 144 countries on gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum 2017 Gender Gap Report. “In terms of sexual violence or discrimination, all of it is rooted in traditional culture,” he says.
China, for example, did not hold people who bought women or children criminally liable until late 2015, and only passed an anti-domestic-violence law
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