feminist blogs

The Chinese Government has called for an end to the public shaming of prostitutes in China by police, the New York Times reports this week.  Those suspected or accused of prostitution are regularly shackled and paraded in public by law enforcement, exacting the ultimate price for their crime – public humiliation and identification. Just because [...]

The study of female homoeroticism in Chinese media is a small yet evolving academic discipline. It is, therefore, of great importance that Backward Glances was written. Exploring popular media produced during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, author Fran Martin addresses the ways in which same-sex [...]

Every other year, the Olympics bring inspirational stories and a good deal of spectacle to the living rooms of just about everyone who has a TV or Internet access. Even though the coverage often reinforces gender roles, it at least gives women athletes an opportunity to have the cameras focus on their abilities and thus [...]

Fiona Sze-Lorrain was born in Singapore and grew up with a multitude of cultural influences which appear in the poems of Water the Moon. The title of this collection brings together two potent feminine symbols but, just as the moon leaves shadows, it leaves the reader with questions. Who is to bring water the moon [...]

We are very excited to announce a monthly book club on Gender Across Borders! All of us are avid readers as well as writers, and would love to engage more with our readers (that means you!) through a monthly book club. Each month we will announce our text of choice, giving readers a month to [...]

May the Year of the Tiger bring you joy and prosperity. Filed under: China

I have witnessed many an online conversation about the politics of food devolve into a debate over whether or not being vegan or vegetarian (veg*n) is a privilege (though this did not happen with Colleen’s excellent post last month about Feminism & Food). These arguments result from an error in categorization: being veg*n is not [...]

Every week I will post a short biography from The United Nations Who’s Who of Women and the Environment.  This week is featuring Mei Ng from China:

From meeting rooms to pollution hotspots, from lobby platform to legislative chambers, from recycling sweatshops to landfills, from congested streets to country parks, from consumer wasteland to green homes, from kindergartens to university lecture halls, from freezing air-conditioned offices to wind farms in southern China, from urbanized Hong Kong to unsustainable villages and drought plagued provinces in developing China, Mei Ng’s green footprint has travelled far and wide. In the last 15 years, her effort to promote awareness and transfer NGO experience has helped to catalyze the budding green movement in China since 1992. Mei Ng’s green message has travelled 26500 km to 15 provinces and touched over 860,000 people.

Mrs. Mei Ng is the Director of Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong). She was elected to the UNEP Global 500 Roll of Honor in 2000. In the same year, she was appointed by the State Environmental Protection Agency as China Environment Envoy. In 2003, Mrs Ng was decorated with the Bronze Bauhinia Star by the Hong Kong SAR Government for her environmental contribution to Hong Kong.

Mrs. Ng has actively participated in environmental policy development and community mobilization. She was appointed to the Advisory Council on the Environment (ACE) since 2001 and invited as an advisor to the Hong Kong Sustainable Industry Council.

Leading a dedicated team to catalyse sustainability thinking, environmental governance and public participation, her priority campaigns include responsible consumption, renewable energy, community participation and sustainable development through women and youth empowerment.

Her millennium vision is to mobilize women folks to safeguard their environmental and quality of life. Turning pig waste-to-energy in China’s arid western region to halt logging and desertification and raising awareness of women factory workers in Southern China’s pollution hotspots, Mei Ng believes in lighting a candle rather than curse darkness.

As a sustainability pathfinder, Mei Ng has been lighting small candles in Hong Kong and China. She believes in Do-It-Yourself Environmentalism in keeping with the spirit of Sustainability.

China shopping centre builds ‘car park for women’:

Official Wang Zheng told AFP news agency the car park was meant to cater to women’s “strong sense of colour and different sense of distance”.

It has wider spaces to better suit women drivers and is painted ‘pink and light purple to appeal to female tastes’.

(Via ghostlove.)