Making Women's Studies an Academic Discipline

In 1995, I attended the NGO Forum on Women of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. I gave a speech at the forum on minority women in border areas, and I explained the education and development of minority women in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

During other forums, I delivered speeches on education, marriage and family and the growth of intellectual women, and I called for society to pay greater attention to education and the development of minority women.

Inspired by the Beijing Declaration and Plan for Action, I began advocating women's studies as an academic discipline and promoting gender equality in universities. After the conference, I gave lectures on women's studies and gender sociology at several universities in Yunnan. I hosted a women's program broadcast on Kunming TV, and I gave lectures on minority women's participation in politics, and those lectures were broadcast on Yunnan TV.

In 1999, Yunnan Minzu University established postgraduate courses on women's studies and gender sociology, and it also opened the Minority Women and Gender Sociology Research Center. In 2006, the All-China Women's Federation approved the center's application to become one of the 21 women and gender studies research and training bases in China.

As an ethnic Bai woman, I care most about harmony among people of various minority groups, and about the development of minority women. I have written several books on women's studies and the lifestyles, traditional morals, handicrafts and costumes of minority groups.

I have participated in numerous international academic-exchange activities. I have been invited by universities in the US, Japan, Austria, the UK, Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Mexico, Portugal and France to participate in seminars on women's issues.

(Women of China)