Politics & Empowerment for Women
---- Political Education and Training
               Zou Xiaoqiao
               All-China Women’s Federation

     Since the Fourth World Conference on Women, the international community has paid much more attention to the issue of women’s participation in politics and some countries have also made progress in this regard. But on a global scale, women still face serious problems and challenges in the field of participating in politics, especially in the decision-making level. Owing to the restriction of the social and economic development, women’s economic status and educational level as a whole is relatively low, and also be influenced by the traditional old idea of man superior to woman and other cultural bias, a number of women are not mentally prepared and lack confidence and courage to participate in politics. At the same time, they are faced with the contradiction of career and family, which makes them fear to step into the power.
	    How to solve this problem and let more women participate in politics and then enter the decision-making level? I believe the political education and training is one of the important methods to raise women’s political awareness, besides enhancing women’s economic status and educational level and adopting a series of measures related to legislation, law popularization and supervision in order to guarantee women’s participation in politics. On the one hand, we should upgrade the political awareness of women as a whole and provide them with all kinds of training. On the other hand, we should make full use of mass media to publicize the idea of sexual equality and make the whole society understand the importance of women in politics and decision-making, creating a sound environment for women masses in this aspect.
    The following is our experiences and measures taken in regarding the political education and training for women.
   1. Advocating and educating Chinese women to have “four- self spirit”. ACWF calls on women all over the country to have four-self spirit of self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement and help them overcome inferiority complex. Meanwhile, women’s federations at different levels take various opportunities and ways to upgrade overall quality of women which includes the political awareness, moral standard, educational, scientific and professional level, aiming at further enhancing the ability of women’s participating in politics. 
   2. Strengthening training for women. We use 36 women’s colleges and schools run by the women’s federations as the training bases and organize training courses on leadership capability and management for women. For example, starting from November 1997, ACWF took China Women’s College as the training base and conducted training programs for about 5oo 
 core members from women’s federations at various levels in order to raise their political and managerial level and ability.
    3. Making full use of mass media to publicize the idea of sexual equality and the importance of women’s participating in politics. There are 49 kind of newspapers and magazines run by the women’s federations, with a special emphasis on reporting women’s role in society and deeds of the successful women. These reports help the whole society to realize that women’s participation in politics reflects a degree of social civilization and as well as an important sign of equality between man and woman. With the effort made by the All-China Women’s Federation, the Central TV Station opened up a special program called “Half of the Sky” in 1995 and People’s Daily, the most influential national newspaper, started a special column of women in the early this year. They emphatically report and publicize the current situation, the role and status of the women that have enlightened and educated the society.
    4. Devoting major efforts to publicize and commend a group of advanced typical women who play an exemplary role for other women. All-China Women’s Federation cites outstanding women who have made achievements in the field of political and community participation and economic construction every year during the celebration of the March 8th International Women’s Day. These outstanding women are organized to report to others about their deeds and achievements, educate women masses to be self-reliance and fight for their own rights and interests so as to change by themselves the disadvantaged environment in participating in politics and decision-making. In 1997 only, the ACWF cited 115  national “March 8th”red banners, 101 national “March 8th” red banner collectives and 100 advanced individuals for wiping out illiteracy. Their achievements have evoked among women repercussions.