Guo Jianmei: I want to help more people who are in disadvantaged situations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eea03GdXkGI

Guo Jianmei is a Chinese lawyer, human rights activist, and director of a women's legal aid NGO (Non-governmental organization). She founded the China public interest Lawyers website, an organization of over 600 lawyers who help with cases in even the most isolated areas of China. In China, Guo Jianmei is one of the foremost lawyers working to protect women's rights. Over the past 25 years, she and her teams have provided free legal consultation to 120,000 women. Meanwhile, she handled over 4,000 lawsuits concerning women's rights and gender equality. In addition, she has helped women to fight for gender equality, for equal pay for equal work, and to fight against sexual harassment or employment contracts that ban women who are pregnant. She has not only helped rural women who have been deprived of their land property to fight for their rights. She also leads the Women's Legal Research and Service Centre, which protects women's rights in China. She has taken social activism to protect women's rights and promote the improvement of the legal system in China.

Picture 1: Guo Jianmei speaking with Ms Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.

China also has a "Public Interest Lawyer."

When Guo Jianmei worked for China Lawyer magazine, she went to the Fourth World Conference on Women NGO Forum in 1995. That work experience became a significant turning point in her life. At that conference, she heard Hillary speak for the first time. The conference's theme was "Women's Rights are Human Rights." After three months of attending this conference, Guo jianmei resigned from her job and established the Women's Law Research and Service Centre at Beijing University Law School. This service center mainly serves women's groups, providing legal assistance to women and free representation for vulnerable groups. Thus, she began her career as a public interest lawyer and became China's first public interest lawyer. She has been persistent in protecting the vulnerable group for 25 years.

Picture 2: Guo Jianmei and her colleagues speaking with the rural women.

Guo Jianmei: "In my family, women were always disrespected"

In rural areas across the country, married women who no longer live in the village are often treated like any other members of the village, due to unchanged household registration—they are considered responsible for cultivating their share of the land, paying taxes and fees, and fulfilling obligations in public projects such as roads and schools. However, when the village sells the land to the government or a developer, the married women are often excluded from their share of the profits. In 2007 the Center successfully won a case for 30-some married women in Huizhou, Guangdong. In the same year, the Center recovered a total of 90 million RMB for 28 married women in the city of Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia. The Center went on to work with local chapters of Women's Federations, providing training and conducting published surveys to push local governments to change rules and protect the property rights of women. In her opinion, rural women are vulnerable among the vulnerable. Guo Jianmei enrolled in Beijing University in 1978, and she did not hesitate to choose the law school. She said, "I just wanted to be a lawyer like in the Indian film 'The Wanderer,' defying the odds and delivering justice."

Guo Jianmei is free to help vulnerable groups fight the case and, through the cases, promote the legislative process in China.

By being responsible for the first sexual harassment case in Beijing, she promoted social and public awareness of the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests amendment. She promoted equal employment rights in society by helping vulnerable groups fight labor dispute cases. In addition, she has fought gender discrimination in the workplace, women's labor rights, and interests, violence against women, the rights and interests of migrant women workers, rural women's land rights and interests, etc. She promotes national legislative advocacy for women's protection through responsibility for the cases in crucial and complex areas of women's rights and interests.

Guo Jianmei:"To defend women's rights, I want to work until I cannot do it anymore."

Guo Jianmei received the 40th annual Right Livelihood Award on 25 September 2019, which recognizes people who are committed to solving global problems. The organizers said, "Guo Jianmei has shown great courage and extraordinary perseverance in the face of the dramatic increase in restrictions on civil society space." Because Guo Jianmei is one of the foremost lawyers working to protect women's rights in China, her team has provided free legal advice to 120,000 women and taken on over 4,000 lawsuits on women's rights and gender equality. She has spread the term "public interest litigation" to the public consciousness by giving women's voices in cases and submitting over 100 legislative proposals relating to women's rights. Up until now, Guo Jianmei has always insisted on defending women's rights, spreading awareness of the need for women to defend their rights on their own, and constantly raising society's awareness of the vulnerable. As she believes, she will continue on this path.

Guo Jianmei": I prefer to be called a "feminist." Women have their softness and delicacy; they also have their strength. However, it is not about being like a man, and it is not about being oppositional, defeating men, or turning women into men."