ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the trajectory of "gender mainstreaming" in China since 1995, examines how it has been officially interpreted, its impact on policies and programs, and its overall effect on women's rights and development. One examines the main actors currently driving China's gender mainstreaming agenda, weigh progress and setbacks, and set forth possible future strategies. Some feminist scholars argue that the gender mainstreaming promoted by the feminist movement has become a strategy of transnational capital to serve its own interests in neo-liberal led globalization, that it is a mechanism through which women's production and reproduction are instrumentalized and exploited, thereby perpetuating gender inequality. Chinese society includes multiple forms of conservatism, including neo-liberal market economic policies that appear to be discriminating against women in development and economic growth, and the revival of so-called traditional culture and values, a discourse that defines women as good mothers, wives, and daughters without affirming women as rights holders in either the public or private domain.
