Duihua(dialogue) in-Between

This paper discusses the recent encounters of ‘feminism’ as a travelling concept in mainland China. Against the backdrop of its century-long women's movement and the more recent establishment of women's studies since the 1980s, questions relating to the meanings of feminism are analysed through the problematic of translation. The different Chinese words deployed have ranged all the way from an earlier more directly political emphasis on women's rights and equality (nuquan zhuyi) to highlighting women's difference or femininity (nuxing zhuyi). In the immediate years following the Beijing Conference of 1995, major debates focused on whether the term ‘feminism’ was meaningful for Chinese women to begin with, but these then shifted from the question of whether it ought to be used at all, to how it should be translated. Three different kinds of translators have been critical during the 1980s and 1990s in shaping the dialogue on feminism – the official state-supported women's organization, the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), with its headquarters in Beijing; Chinese women's studies scholars and activists living in mainland China; and the Chinese Society for Women's Studies (CSWS), based in the United States, whose email discussions have included diverse opinions and viewpoints from other parts of the world.