Strategizing for politics: Chinese women's participation the one-party state

SynopsisThe article outlines the key challenges and obstacles for aspiring women leaders that have emerged during the economic and political reforms from the mid 1980s. It presents the perspectives of women activists in the PRC currently working to improve the rates of women's participation in formal, official politics. The paper argues that in the face of ongoing obstacles to women's participation, women activists in the PRC are beginning to dismantle within formal political discourse a key tenet that has limited women's advocacy powers in the reform period—the principle that women's equality with men will be achieved through economic development and requires no special gender-specific program to facilitate its emergence.