By Shen Tingting

Women in China face a threatening environment, including the risk of violence at home, in the workplace, at government agencies and organized crime. At least one in four Chinese women experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Many women also experience discrimination, especially in the workplace. Other social issues include human trafficking, and marriage and family issues. At the same time, there is a leadership deficit at the national level. There is no woman in the inner circle of China’s leadership, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party. As Chinese women’s rights activist Wu Qing points out: Lack of political freedom is stifling the women’s movement. In response, in the past decade, China has seen the rapid emergence of an independent civil society. In 2010, Chinese authorities estimated there were 444,000 NGOs, many led by women. The rapid growth, perseverance and courage of these civil society leaders, who are effectively mobilizing and empowering their communities, has led to small but tangible gains for women.


However, these independent organizations start at a deficit. Asia Catalyst provides training and small sub-grants to start-up nonprofits in China. Our work with dozens of grassroots independent NGOs around the country, including China’s network of sex work organizations and its network of women living with HIV/AIDS, has given us opportunities to assess their needs.

Women tend to have fewer educational opportunities in China and their organizations tend to be under-capitalized from the beginning. They operate in a restrictive–sometimes overtly hostile–political environment, and compete with male-run government-organized NGOs for funding and support. Groups combating HIV/AIDS face an even more urgent funding crisis with the imminent departure of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. International donors have a choice to make: the gains of the past few years can be a foundation for rapid growth of domestic civil society–or that foundation can rapidly erode, if the international community turns away. One thing is certain: no matter how strong its economy may be, the Chinese government is unlikely to fund independent groups that engage in policy advocacy on behalf of women or marginalized communities.

 

Challenges these groups face include:

• Inability to register as nonprofits. Formal, legal registration as NGOs would give these organizations the legal right to exist. But China’s restrictive NGO registration laws require that an organization find a government organ to serve as its supervisory body–virtually impossible for a group that does any kind of policy advocacy. Thus, most grassroots NGOs are either unregistered or registered as businesses; which means they pay taxes, are ineligible for government projects, may not legally solicit public donations, and face the risk of shut down at any time. These restrictions violates  international standards of freedom of association and freedom of expression.

• Chronic lack of funds. Because of the restrictions on registration and the political “sensitivity” of independent NGOs in general, there is little domestic funding and NGOs rely heavily on international donors. However, many international donors are leaving China, citing its rapid economic growth. This year, the Global Fund, which provided major support to help establish many HIV/AIDS grassroots organizations in China, announced that it will terminate support.

Most Chinese grassroots groups do not have the English-language skills needed to apply for private foundation funds overseas. The Global Fund’s decision has already affected women’s organizations working to address HIV/AIDS among women in central China as well as women in ethnic minority communities along China’s southwest borders. After successful advocacy from the Henan Grassroots Women’s HIV/AIDS Network, the country coordinating mechanism (CCM) for the Global Fund in China implemented a call for application for women for the 2011 election of NGO representatives to the CCM. As a result, 40% of NGO representatives to the CCM are women, up from none in the previous cycle. However, the change in representation was too late to push for development of a gender-based strategy and earmark funding for women’s reproductive health and women’s organizations in the last budget. Therefore, women’s organizations and women’s issues will not benefit from the last available funding under the Global Fund.

These funding shortages limit the growth and scale of services offered by women-led grassroots organizations. With no national funding strategy that focuses on the needs of women in the HIV/AIDS response to counter-balance the retreat of
international funding from China, newly established women-led organizations have hardly any access to funding that will secure the continuation of their work, nor help them develop from grassroots start-up organization to stable and effective service-provider. The above-mentioned Women’s Network currently lacks sufficient funding to continue their programs and employ their staff.

• Weak technical capacity. In addition to structural obstacles such as registration and funding, our assessment of Chinese NGOs finds that many struggle with limited management capacity. Most organizations lack strategic plans and risk mission drift.  Staff and volunteer management and leadership development are weak. Organizations do not have enough funding to recruit and develop professional staff, so high turnover is common. This is true as well of national-level associations such as the Women’s HIV/AIDS Network, which identified the ability to influence policy as one of the main obstacles to mainstreaming gender-based strategies.

We urge international supporters to:

  • Press China to permit registration of independent NGOs, including those working on advocacy;
  • Establish small grants programs for the support of grassroots NGOs;
  • Support programs that build basic management capacity for small NGOs;
  • Provide opportunities for women NGO staff to develop leadership skills, visibility and connections that can make their organizations sustainable;
  • Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to set suitable targets for interventions for women;
  • Press China for guidelines to mainstream gender in national funding strategies;
  • and Urge China to earmark funding for women’s organizations and gender-based interventions in the national health budget.

Shen Tingting is the deputy director of Dongjen Human Rights Education and Action Center.

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