On 7 March 2015, on the eve of the International Women’s Day, five young women in China were arrested on the grounds of “picking quarrels and creating a disturbance”. This incident caught the eye of major international media including the Guardian and CNN, and received a personal endorsement from US presidential candidate Hilary Clinton when she referred to the detention of female activists as “inexcusable” in her tweet. On 13 April, they were released on bail but still under surveillance.
Opposing authority and the existing order
According to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, these five women were Li Tingting (better known as Li Maizi), 25, a Beijing-based manager of the LGBT programme at the Beijing Yirenping Center; Wu Rongrong, 30, founder and executive director of the Weizhiming Women’s Centre in Guangzhou; Wei Tingting, 27, director of Beijing’s Ji’ande LGBT rights organisation; and Wang Man, who had worked on issues including gender equality in poverty eradication. They are now often referred to as China’s “Feminist Five”.
