The Investigation And Reflection On The Concept Of Gender Equality And Its Legislation In China

Equality is the core issue and eternal pursuit of feminist jurisprudence, whose development history is constituted with exploration on equality concept in different historical stages. The research on equality concept of western feminist jurisprudence has experienced the process of "equality", "difference" and postmodern turn. The research on the development trend of equality is conducive to help Chinese scholars to understand the breakthrough of research paradigm from traditional feminism to postmodern feminism jurisprudence, reflect on gender defects existing in the current law of our country, so as to change the old ideas on gender studies in China and provide beneficial reference for the solution of puzzles in legal practice. Besides preface and epilogue, this thesis is divided into four parts.Part 1: The development of equality concept in western feminist jurisprudence. The development of equality concept in western feminist jurisprudence is shown in this part, and the inheritance and transcendence of equality concept between factions of feminist jurisprudenceis summarized. The development of equality concept in western feminist jurisprudence experiences “equality stage”, “difference stage” and post-modern stage of respect for diversity. The equality concept is mainly affected by the liberal feminism in “equality stage”, and the core idea is “men and women are the same and equality is achieved through the improved waywithin the legal framework”. The difference between men and women is emphasized in “difference stage”, and cultural feminism jurisprudence and radical feminism jurisprudence is the most representative. Cultural feminism jurisprudence deems that women value should be embodied in law for the sake of equality between men and women from affirmative perspective of female gender characteristics. However, radical feminism jurisprudencecriticizes the patriarchal social structure as the basis of equal status of women from negative point. Post-modern feminist jurisprudence breaks through the theory dilemma of equality and difference stages, deconstructs binary view of men and women in traditional law, focuses on women internal differences from multiple perspective, opposes to establish abstract and unified criteria.Part 2: The exploration of equality between men and women in the social and legal practice of China. The equality and practice can be summarized into two periods after the foundation of our country: one period is from “equality between men and women” in early years of the new nation to “de-gendering” during the Cultural Revolution, and equality concept and system during this period developed from “women enjoy with the same legal status in men” to “men and women are all the same” which ignored the physiological differences. The other is theperiod since the reform and opening-up, and there was a return of the idea of women in traditional gender roles, focus on difference, clamor for the special protection to women is rising gradually.Part 3:The gender defects in current law of our country. At present the protection of women's rights is still following the path of traditional feminism jurisprudence in our country, namely equal legal rights are given to women and men from the perspective of binary classification, discriminated according to the different display at the same time. The binary view is the reflection of gender essentialism in legislation, which strengthens the gender roles in traditional gender culture and ignores the individual differences in women.Part 4: Build new equality concept using post-modern feminist jurisprudence for reference. There is a high degree of similarity on development process between the two stages of achieving equality between men and women of China and the “equality stage” and “difference stage” of western feminist jurisprudence. Research paradigm of binary opposition of traditional law is broken through by post-modern feminist jurisprudence and that provides a new research perspective for the realization of gender equality in China. On the basis of that, the thesis explains that choice of freedom is the goal of equality,the same value judgment is equal to the different choices, promotion on the establishment of new equality concept with respect to diversity and reflecting free development of human.