Gendered Impacts of China's Development Initiatives in the Global South

Abstract

Using empirical data from communities and stakeholders across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean this open access book provides crucial insights into the profound and multidimensional implications of China's engagement in the Global South for women. The book synthesizes the findings of a two-year, collaborative research project conducted by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). It reveals startling insights into the gendered dimensions of China's soft power; it's peace and security agenda; it's impact on civil society activism; and its investment in mining, infrastructure, and agriculture. Authors put women’s agency at the centre—rejecting approaches that treat women merely as passive victims, or at best, as members of a vulnerable group—and they challenge the gender-blindness in the China’s current South-South cooperation framework and practice. What emerges is a call for mutual accountability for both China and the recipient countries with which it engages. China must foreground gender equality in its development initiatives, which it can do without violating its non-interference and non-conditionality policies, and recipient countries must become active agents for promoting their own gender equality agenda in development cooperation projects. As becomes clear across contexts, this is the only path to a meaningful transnational feminist dialogue aimed at creating more equitable, mutually constructive South-South relations. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).