To find evidence that China’s feminist movement is gaining momentum – despite strict government censorship and repression – check bookshelves, nightstands and digital libraries. There, you might find a copy of one of Chizuko Ueno’s books. The 74-year-old Japanese feminist and author of Feminism from Scratch and Patriarchy and Capitalism has sold more than a million books in China, according to Beijing Open Book, which tracks sales. Of these, 200,000 were sold in January and February alone. Ueno, a professor of sociology at the University of Tokyo, was little known…
Tag: Women’s rights and gender equality
The Guardian view on bearing witness: when the mourners too are gone | Editorial
“We conquer death, dear children,” proclaimed Hebe de Bonafini, leader of Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. She devoted decades to ensuring that her sons, “disappeared” by the military junta in the late 1970s, were kept alive, if only in memory. The Mothers at first demanded the return of their children and then the punishment of those responsible for seizing and killing them. The risks they took were immense: the group’s founders were abducted and thrown into the ocean from “death flights”. But as politicians, the church and almost…
Hospitals under fire and hard-won abortion rights: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
Rama, a 16-year-old Syrian refugee, holds a smiley face as she sits in the office of an organisation that cares for girls who have been forced into early marriage in Saadnayel, Lebanon. Rama was married at 14, divorced a year later and is a mother to an 18-month-old baby. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/DPA The Guardian