Friday, January 4, 2008

Rural Women in China

"She's not trying hard enought to please he master." That's the rural thinking about why a woman is beaten by her husband. Xie Lihua is a feminist and magazine publisher in China, spreading the idea that, "You are yours. You are not anybody else's."

China is the only place on earth, according to the World Health Organization, where more women commit suicide than men - over 150,000 a year, and rural suicides are triple that of the city.

Xie Luha, herself unwanted because she was a girl in a country where only boy babies are wanted, not only publishes her magazine but also founded the Cultural Development Center for Rural Women China's first nongovernmental organization focused on women living outside the city.

She runs a hotline for battered women and those unfairly laid off from their jobs. She has been at the forefront of getting the issue of domestic violence out there and talked about.

To read more, click here for article in the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-women2jan02,1,3436981.story?ctrack=1&cset=true