The Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China on Sunday passed a landmark law on women’s rights, redefining their status in society and making them the recipients of a series of additional rights against abuse and discrimination.
The so-called «Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests» reiterates that «women shall enjoy the same rights as men in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life» and orders local governments to fully comply with all its precepts, the Standing Committee, the main executive body of the CCP, published on its website.
The Standing Committee leaves it up to the Chinese state to take «all necessary measures» to «promote equality, eliminate all forms of discrimination and prohibit the exclusion of the legitimate exercise of women’s various rights and interests,» in the first revision of the original law in more than 30 years.
Article 21 of Chapter III, which strictly prohibits «abuse, neglect, mutilation, sale and other acts that infringe on the rights and interests of women’s life and health» specifically addresses the controversy that erupted this summer after a group of men beat up several women in a restaurant in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan, Hebei province.
Nine men were arrested for the Tangshan assault, which left two of the girls with serious injuries, in a crime that comes on top of the one that occurred in October 2021, when the influential Tibetan woman Lhamo was killed live on air by her ex-husband, or the case of a mother of eight children who was found chained in a brick hut in Jiangsu province in January.
The images of the beating, captured on video, sparked a strong outcry on social media in a country where, according to a 2021 survey, 30 percent of married women have experienced domestic violence. In fact, China’s Supreme People’s Court, the highest judicial instance in the country, demanded in July the stiffening of penalties against those convicted of gender-based violence, as well as against children or the elderly.
