Democracy in Hong Kong: The Benefit of a Gender

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of women to the fight for democracy in greater China, with a particular focus on Hong Kong’s democracy movement of the 1980s. [...] This is in part because the “social institution of patriarchy” and the oppression of women that it causes—including a lack of equal economic opportunities, freedom of movement, or bodily autonomy— is fundamental to the main- 376 Democracy in Hong Kong: The Benefit of a Gender Mainstreaming Approach tenance of non-democratic governments.4 This can certainly be seen in the PRC. [...] This lack of what scholars call “gender mainstreaming” has reverberated from the 1980s democracy movement through the present.6 377 Gina Anne Tam The purpose of this paper is to use the history of Hong Kong’s 1980s de- mocracy movement to highlight the critical importance of a gendered ap- proach to the study of democracy movements in Greater China. [...] In a word, the reforms that stemmed directly from the social movements of the 1960s— as well as the kind of nationalistic critiques of imperialism that underlay the movement— were critical in creating the kind of civil society that made later democracy movements possible.24  This history reminds us that the relationship between democratization and social movements are inextricably linked. [...] This organization and the groups that constituted its membership formed the heart of Hong Kong’s democracy movement—they were the most influential grassroots organizations able to pressure the three power brokers determining Hong Kong’s future: the Hong Kong colonial government, the government of the United Kingdom, and the government of the People’s Republic of China.