To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the United Nations’ World Conference on Women, the 2015 China Philanthropy Women Summit (北京+20：中国民间公益慈善妇女峰会) was held in Xi’an on September 8th and 9th, by Shaanxi Women, Marriage and Family Research Institute (陕西省妇女理论婚姻家庭研究会). The topic of the summit is “how to integrate gender perspectives into the public welfare sector”. Over 60 female leaders in the sector participated in the meeting, and they discussed the development of women’s organizations and grassroots NGOs over the past 20 years, as well as gender mainstreaming issues in the sector. They think that the introduction and promotion of gender issues would not only be beneficial to the designing and implementation of public welfare projects, but would also guarantee the beneficiaries receive the best services from NGOs.
In the summit, CDB presented a research report titled the Current Situation and Challenge of Gender Mainstreaming in the Public Welfare Sector (公益行业中社会性别现状和挑战). The selected 37 organizations of CDB’s research fall into four categories: local NGOs, international NGOs, GONGO, and private foundations.The report shows that even though every citizen has been given the right to have equal access to employment regardless of their nations, ethnics, genders or religion beliefs, stereotypes and stigma in working place are still common in the surveyed organizations, especially in GONGOs. All four types of organizations seldom contact and communicate with women’s organizations concerning gender equality issues. To change the current situation, the report concludes that, on one hand women’s organizations should conduct more advocacy work on gender equality such as providing trainings to workers in the public welfare sector, and on the other the public welfare sector needs some practical techniques and methods to incorporate gender awareness.
