NCJ Number
200629
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 9 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2003 Pages: 655-675
Editor(s)
Claire M. Renzetti
Date Published
June 2003
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article attempts to fill the gap that exists in scholarly treatment of religious women as part of women’s history and as contributors to the public sphere of Chinese political life and place violence within the Chinese state’s treatment of religious women.
Abstract
This article proposes to position violence within the Chinese state’s treatment of religious women, expressed during times of direct physical and psychological abuse. The specific symbiotic relationship in modern Chinese society between Communist statehood and socialist womanhood has rendered violence inflicted on religious minorities a gender issue. Violence is explored in the context of China’s modern history of state-steered violence inflicted on its religious minorities and violence related to female religiosity through the investigation of the patriarchal and multiply invested and diffused nature of power and violence. It attempts to draw out the implications for women’s exercise of agency of recent changes in China from outright violence to a culture of intimidation or for their rights of “self-constitutions.” Although the place of religion has remained the most contested and sensitive sphere of Chinese political life, the memory of violence has not precluded change. Women’s religious organizations have exploited Communist egalitarian rhetoric to their own advantage, able to play the party against their own male clergy and leadership. References