Talk on Women in a New global Development Ethic

On December 19, Ms Venus, An Antrapologist that focueses community development & relief and humanitarian field. After her 10 years experiences in over 200 distances in China, She witnessed and examiend the urban women in China in the global context.

In her presentation she has taken women issues in China as a sample of the global women issues.

She stated that Gender is one of the issue that concerns every culture; gender issues have turned out to be among the most sensitive ones in a changing world, since any transformation in this realm inevitably disrupts the patterns of identity of both genders and touches upon issues of dominance (and hence of power). Yet it is still very commonly find around the world, that women’s right or role in development has been undermined, especially in under-developed marginalized culture communities.

Globalization has created paradoxical consequences for women’s rights in particular. On the one hand, there has been a powerful drive to recognize women as significant actors in development. On the other, notions of cultural specificity have come to the force in novel ways. Cultural distinctiveness has become more closely identified with the arena of gender relations and with the appropriate conduct of women, often singled out as the bearers and signifiers of their culture. Both culture and gender have been politicized in new ways, affecting women’s rights as well as our understanding of the place of culture in development. We are today faced with the serious challenge of developing agendas that avoid the dual pitfalls of ethnocentrism and Western bias on the one hand, and unprincipled forms of cultural relativism that deny women their basic human rights in the name of “difference”, on the other.

The world is developing new ways in dealing with said phenomenon. Placing culture as the heart of development has been developed into a new global ethic, especially pinpointing women as the culture inheritant in such process of development. We are showing you how has this been developing in China, the humanitarian and developing arena.