As one of China's foremost feminist activists and thinkers, Ai was interviewed by the Global Feminisms Project at the University of Michigan. In this interview, Ai talks about her upbringing as well as about the current state of feminism in China and its outlook.
The Global Feminisms Project, hosted by the University of Michigan, archives oral history interviews with individuals who identify themselves as working on behalf of issues related to women and gender in different national contexts. The goal of the project is to encourage teachers and researchers to study issues related to the many forms of feminist or women’s movement activism in general, as well as activism on behalf of particular issues.
Beyond that, this project is also a useful resource for general readers who are interested in learning more about the history of feminist movements around the world. Interviewees describe their lives, their views, and their activism in considerable detail. The project offers the unedited interviews as primary sources for understanding the history of activism in all its complexity and variation.
The project covers 14 countries, including China, with each having a dedicated site. According to introductions by Wang Zheng, then a professor at University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the China Interviews took place in two phases.
In the first, the interviews illustrate the multi-dimensional development of feminist practices in China’s transformation from a socialist state economy to a capitalist market economy from the mid-1980s, when spontaneous women’s activism emerged. Situating such development in the context of both global capitalism and global feminisms, especially in the context of the Fourth UN Conference on Women (FWCW) when Chinese feminists came into direct contact with global feminisms, the interviews, conducted in the early 2000s, explore the cultural, social, and political meanings of Chinese feminist practices. They illustrate how official, non-official, domestic, and overseas Chinese women activists expressed diverse visions of gender equality, even engaging in struggles over the very word “gender.”
These interviews reflect the scope and complexity of the contemporary Chinese women’s movement. Feminist activists include women leaders from diverse groups, such as Ge Youli, who was involved as a young leader in various urban based organizational activities funded by international donors to disseminate feminist ideas; Zhang Lixi, Vice President of the Chinese Women’s College that affiliates with the All-China Women’s Federation, who has promoted women’s studies in her college; Ai Xiaoming, prominent feminist scholar and activist; and Gao Xiaoxian, who holds an official position in the Shaanxi Women’s Federation while creating several women’s organizations outside the official system to engage in legal services for women, anti-domestic violence movements, and issues of gender and development.
In the second phase, five interviews of a younger cohort of Chinese feminists record the rapidly contracted public space for NGO activism in China since the second decade following the FWCW and severe surveillance by the state over feminist activities initiated by autonomous feminist groups and individuals. They also provide powerful testimonies to tremendous creativity, perseverance and courage demonstrated by young feminists who in many cases are making a precarious living in the private sector without much resource for their feminist activism.
<a href=”https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/globalfeminisms/interviews/china/”>The China site</a> provides videos and transcripts of the interviews (both in Chinese and English). In addition to the interviews, the archive also provides maps, statistics, a timeline, podcasts and other resources to assist understanding of the context in which the activists carried out their work.