Leta Hong Fincher

A feminist movement clashing with China’s authoritarian government. Featured in the Washington Post and the New York Times. On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for thirty-seven days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among China’s educated, urban women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses the greatest challenge to China’s authoritarian regime today. Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other leading Chinese activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the difficulties they face and their “joy of betraying Big Brother,” as one of the Feminist Five wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the #MeToo movement, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.

The Feminist Awakening in China

Betraying Big Brother

A century ago, Chinese feminists fighting for the emancipation of women helped spark the Republican Revolution, which overthrew the Qing empire. After China's Communist revolution of 1949, Chairman Mao famously proclaimed that "women hold up half the sky." In the early years of the People's Republic, the Communist Party sought to transform gender relations with expansive initiatives such as assigning urban women jobs in the planned economy. Yet those gains are now being eroded in China's post-socialist era. Contrary to many claims made in the mainstream media, women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of many rights and gains relative to men. Leftover Women debunks the popular myth that women have fared well as a result of post-socialist China's economic reforms and breakneck growth. Laying out the structural discrimination against women in China will speak to broader problems with China's economy, politics, and development.

The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China

Leftover Women

Leta Hong Fincher's landmark book Leftover Women shone a light on the resurgence of gender inequality in 21st-century China. Ten years on, women in China continue to experience a dramatic rolling back of rights and gains in the increasingly patriarchal political climate of the Xi Jinping era. Leftover Women explores the structural discrimination against women and the broader problems with China's economy, politics, and development that lie behind it. This updated edition includes a new preface exploring developments in China in the 10 years since the book's original publication, including the new "three child policy", the growth in online feminist and LGBTQ activism and the state's increasingly repressive moves against dissent.

The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, 10th Anniversary Edition

Na véspera do Dia Internacional da Mulher de 2015, o governo chinês prendeu cinco ativistas feministas por 37 dias. Elas acabaram se tornando uma famosa causa mundial. Hillary Clinton falou em nome delas, e ativistas em todos os cantos do planeta inundaram as redes sociais com a hashtag #FreeTheFive. Mas essas cinco mulheres são apenas uma parte de um movimento feminista muito maior. Neste livro, a jornalista e estudiosa Leta Hong Fincher mostra que esse movimento popular representa hoje a maior ameaça ao regime autoritário da China. Por meio de entrevistas com as cinco feministas e outros ativistas chineses importantes, a autora esclarece os desafios que eles enfrentam. Traçando o surgimento de uma nova consciência feminista com campanhas semelhantes ao #MeToo e descrevendo como o regime comunista suprimiu a história de suas próprias lutas e conquistas feministas, Enfrentando o dragão é a história de como o movimento contra o patriarcado pode reconfigurar a China e o mundo.

Leta Hong Fincher

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