Growing a Better Future for Rural Women
Inspired by this, Xie set up China’s first charity organization for rural women in 1996 – Home for Female Migrant Workers. It provided much needed legal assistance and training for those coming from the countryside to work in cities. But Xie didn’t stop there. In 1998, she and Wu Qing, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, founded the Rural Women Vocational School to teach those from the poorest families practical skills for free.
In 2001 Xie set up the Rural Women’s Cultural Development Center, a charitable organization completely independent of the commercial Rural Women magazine. The new organization took Xie’s two existing non-profit organizations under its umbrella and added to them a large group of rural community projects, including programs promoting literacy, water conservation, and sex education for teenagers.
Since then, the Home of Female Migrant Workers has extended its services to include the education of migrant children, healthcare, and support to help rural women integrate into their new city surroundings. And the Rural Women Vocational School has trained about 10,000 women in subjects such as computers, sewing, cooking and hairdressing. The center’s rural community projects have been welcomed by farmers and won the organization many awards, including the 2004 UNESCO International Literacy Prize. Xie herself was awarded the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards of 2007 as one of the “women changing our world.”
Sowing the Seeds of Change
During the last two decades Xie has developed a deeper understanding of her chosen path. “The aim of charity is to unite every bit of positive energy,” Xie said. For her, this “positive energy” exists not only in donors but also in those struggling for change in response to their plight. Existing at the bottom of China’s society, rural women are usually assumed to be ignorant or illiterate. But the Rural Women Center believes in the potential of each of them and persists in harnessing their abilities to achieve progress.
Wherever Xie has traveled in the countryside, she has found amazing women, whom she thinks of as seeds. “If we cultivate these seeds, they will grow and influence the surrounding people and their villages,” she said. When she visits a village, Xie usually organizes activities or games with the local women, during which their energy and intelligence become apparent. Some women’s wits shine through as they vividly describe their friends, while others impress Xie by gathering together a dozen or more women to attend one of her roundtable talks in just minutes.
In 2007, the Rural Women Center launched a rural women’s library project in six villages of Beijing, Hebei and Shanxi to provide the chance and resources for these “seeds” to flourish. The center supplied these libraries furniture and books and left the rest, including management and fundraising, to their directors, all local rural women. Though the directors didn’t earn anything from the project, many devoted all their free time and energy to winning support from villagers, expanding their influence, and making it a home for local women and girls.
The locals, keen to improve their economic situation rather than pursue spiritual fulfillment, initially mocked, ignored, or questioned the libraries. But directors one by one had their coups. The Rural Women’s Center shared 21 tips from Wang Senlin, head of the Lisenlin Village’s library in Hebei Province, such as skillful communication with the village committee, knowing the merits of fellow villagers, putting the right amount of pressure on them to make them feel important, and winning husbands’ support and help for the library.
In the last five years, over 60 village libraries have been set up in over a dozen provinces. Their executives convene every year and have set up a journal to share their knowledge and experience. In May 2012, four were awarded Rural Women Leadership Prizes at the Sixth World Women Development Forum held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. In the course of bringing vitality to the cultural atmosphere in their communities, these women have grown into self-confident and enthusiastic rural leaders.
The Challenge of Social Conventions
As one of China’s first charity organizations, the Rural Women Center had no experienced predecessor to follow on issues like organizational structure, project management and fund raising. With tight budgets, the center made funds stretch by reducing office expenses and staff, and their practical and effective projects attracted donations. They also explored channels such as fundraising dinners, employing professional volunteers, and applying for special funds and preferential policies from government.
But their greatest challenges lay in overcoming conservative perceptions. In the countryside, for example, women were regarded as rebels if they participated in politics. However, as men went to work in cities, women became the majority. They took on greater roles in public affairs and their voices began to be heard. In 2006, the Rural Women Center held its first Forum of 100 Women Village Heads. The biennial event provided a stage for grassroots women leaders to communicate with each other and discuss issues like discrimination against women enshrined in longstanding social conventions, and the role of women in the construction of new countryside.
Their work in suicide intervention encountered much bigger resistance. Suicide is relatively common in the countryside, especially among women. One report revealed that the suicide rate among women in China is 28 percent higher than men, making China the only country where more women than men commit suicide. Suicide and suicidal feelings are still regarded as a disgrace, so those in pain rarely get any help or sympathy. Furthermore, in the countryside, where most female suicides occur, deeply ingrained discrimination means that women’s rights fall by the wayside and their opinions are not respected. When faced with adversity they often lack support and are forced to take extreme measures.
In 1996 the Rural Women Center finally convinced women’s federations in three counties to co-launch a suicide intervention project. To make it more easily accepted, they named the project the “Women’s Health Support Team,” avoiding any mention of suicide. The project established files to monitor families with elderly and disabled members as well as those in poverty and orphans. It also taught rural women healthcare and scientific knowledge, and organized talks and group activities. Gradually, women trusted the team more and more with their emotional lives and became more active and open-minded in life.
The numbers suggest that the project has been an outstanding success. In the six villages that the project covered there had been 25 attempted suicides resulting in 13 deaths in 2000 alone; during the first five years after the project was launched in 2001 there were only three attempts in these villages, none of them fatal.
Xie Lihua regards obstacles as an opportunity to adjust strategies and improve projects, and is always ready to try new approaches. In 2006, the Rural Women Center campaigned to persuade male villagers to participate in its programs, making them more popular among local populace. The center also cultivated “seeds” like Ye Xinzhou to make their ambitions a reality. Today, these seeds have become trusted people in their communities and villagers are ready and willing to be mobilized to help those in difficulties.
