Ladies first

At the age of 78, Wang Xingjuan is still working, eight hours a day, seven days a week.

Known internationally for creating and maintaining one of the earliest women's NGOs in China, the white-haired Wang is often found in her office, a three-bedroom apartment in the southern part of downtown Beijing. She deals with fund raising, training and strategic planning for the organization, the Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center. She founded it in 1988 when, she recalls, her hair was still black.

Hung on the wall of the 25-sq-m living room are the organization's posters, featuring maple leaves as its symbol, notes of gratitude left by various women and a window with 26 books on the sill about women's rights, compiled by the center over the past 20 years.

While one living room is used as a meeting room and venue for workshops and training, Wang has turned the other living room into an office for her and a colleague. Administration is done in another room and a third room is home to the organization's hotline center where, each day from 9 am to 4 pm, three volunteer experts, psychologists or lawyers, sit by the phone offering psychological assistance and legal advice to callers, on issues such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, discrimination and even incest.

It is China's first and longest-running hotline center for women and was set up in September 1992. Since then "the telephone has never stopped ringing," Wang says.

"We do not seek to just solve a woman's present hardship, but hope to alleviate some of her psychological burdens by giving her an opportunity to open up to us and pour out her feelings," Wang says.

"In the end we must help women to be self-dependent, to strive to be stronger and to stand up for themselves. We must promote women's growth. This is our final objective."

By the end of last year, it is estimated the service helped around 100,000 people.

"While it is a huge number in itself, with China's population at about 1.3 billion people, we have only helped a very small number," Wang comments.

Over the past two decades the Maple Center has gradually expanded its services to include not only direct services to women, but also intervention activities that aim to educate the community. Activists from the center have worked with local communities to provide gender training workshops for the police, judges, doctors, neighborhood committee officials and women's federation officials.

Wang's aim is to bring the idea of gender into the mainstream of society so as to create a legal and social environment in which women can enjoy real equality.

Two decades of incessant effort has made Wang an authority on women's issues, one of the 1,000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price in 2005 and a Vital Voices' 2007 recipient.

Wang admits, however, she cared little about women's issues when she was younger, nor had she worked in women's organizations before she founded the organization.

A graduate of Jinling University in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Wang's professional life began as a journalist in 1949 and by the time she retired in 1988 she had been a staffer for Xinhua Daily, China Youth Daily and the Beijing Press.

Wang was drawn to women's issues a few years before her retirement.

Wang saw that Chinese women were facing many new problems with economic and political reforms. Women had to compete for jobs in a market-based and male-centered economy and they needed help to deal with the situation.

Then came her retirement. There were two choices for her - she could choose to write, since she had been dealing with words for decades, or she could choose "to do something for our sisters while China is in a phase of reform and opening up."

"The latter idea lingered in my mind and would not go. When I was going through adolescence, I had an extremely difficult time. From that I realize that when one is in despair, a helping hand can light the way."

As a result, in Oct 1988, Wang initiated a civil organization- the Women's Research Institute under the School of Management Science of China, which later became The Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center.

Wang experienced many difficulties launching the center. Having no office, she rented a one-story house that leaked. She bought desks and chairs from a second-hand shop. There were no affiliations, no business licenses, no funding. But Wang did not give up.

For 20 years the Maple Center has focused on helping vulnerable women. Beside the hotlines, in 1994 the center conducted a survey on single mothers, and in 1998 it established the Ark Family Center, which provides psychological and social services for single-parent families. Single mothers and their children went to the ark. In 2001, Wang introduced the foreign-based "client-oriented approach" and practiced "community intervention in family problems" in Tianjin and "servicing the community with psychological services" in Xuanwu district, Beijing.

While these helped her find a way to protect women's rights in the new era, Wang is eager to share her experience with like-minded people by compiling books and creating operational models based on her experience so that more people will help improve the lot of women.

Looking back on her 20 years of active retirement, Wang says she is glad to note "big developments and further signs of progress."

"For instance, there is a new provision in the revised marriage law that prohibits domestic abuse. This illustrates that lawmakers have accepted a gender perspective," Wang says.

"Our government also made a Five Year Plan for the development of women - the first plan was from 1995 to 2000. Now there is a 10-year plan for women's development for the years 2000 to 2010. This is also an example of the fact that gender perspectives are influencing mainstream policymakers and legislators.

"Of course, I feel there is much more to be done. Gender perspectives needs to affect more aspects of society, especially the institutions that administer justice. Although there are laws that protect women, some judges and law enforcement personnel still do not have a gender perspective."

"To be honest, I would like to have a real retirement. If only there was someone who could take over my place," Wang says. "There's a long way to go."

(China Daily 03/07/2008 page18)