ABSTRACT
While the 1990s to some extent continued patterns of women's movement emergence that began in the Initiating Phase of the 1980s with the early foundings of women's studies in China, the 1990s Popularizing Phase featured important new developments. In particular, increasing ties to international or exogenous forces had a significant impact on the extent of women's organizations, their types, and the issues that they were interested in addressing. These forces led to an expansion of women's organizations not directly tied to the All-China Women's Federation, and therefore to an increasing diversity of voices speaking on behalf of women's also diverse needs and interests. The provision of international funding through the Ford Foundation and the experiences provided by the Fourth World Conference on Women led to the emergence of a whole new cluster of women's movement activists, a group that is interested in women organizing themselves to promote social change, rather than depending on the Chinese party-state to improve women's condition. Despite these new developments, however, this movement has continued to exist in a context that is still very much non-democratic and dominated by a state with hegemonic aspirations vis-à-vis social formations. To this extent, the movement is symbiotic in its relationship to that state.
