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This lecture takes up the issue of women's political participation in China with particular reference to village committees. Of interest is the decline in and continuing low level of women's political participation in village governance structures in the reform period, and particularly following the widespread introduction of competitive village elections since 1988. The dominant explanation given for women's numerical under-representation in village committees, and in politics more generally, focuses on women's lack of self-confidence, which inhibits them from standing as candidates, and on the enduring drag of ‘feudal’ attitudes, which construct women as inferior to men, and therefore not capable of leadership. These two factors combined have in turn a material effect, as son-preference advantages boys in access to basic schooling, who thus, particularly in poorer rural areas, end up with higher levels of education, and greater opportunities in waged employment. The common solution adopted by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), China's largest women's organisation, lies in a two-pronged attack: first in the ideological realm, targeting men and women's sexist attitudes and concomitantly promoting a discourse of equality, and second, in the material realm by raising women's skills. It is argued here that this dominant text on women's under-representation in village committees masks a more complex conjuncture of variables that shape women's position in local politics. Social practices, economic structures, institutional norms and procedures, and political culture all prey on, revitalise and reproduce gendered notions of the appropriate place of women and men in political life.

Jude Howell is Professor of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). She was Director of the ESRC Research Programme on Non-Governmental Public Action and former Director of the Centre for Civil Society at the LSE (2003-2010). She has written extensively on issues relating to civil society, development, security, gender and governance, and on China in particular. She has conducted research in China, India, Mozambique, Kenya, and Afghanistan. She is series editor of a new book series on Non-Governmental Public Action published by Palgrave Press, in which her book The Global War on Terror, Aid and Civil Society (with Jeremy Lind), 2009, appears. Her other recent books include Civil Society Under Strain: Counter-terrorism policy, civil society and aid post-9/11, 2010, Kumarian Press, Gender and Civil Society (co-edited with Diane Mulligan) 2005, Routledge, Civil Society and Development (co-authored with Jenny Pearce) 2002, Lynne Rienner Inc, .and Governance in China, 2004, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. With Gordon White and Shang Xiaoyuan she co-authored In Search of Civil Society. Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996.