Nice_girl.jpg (Photo : Wikimedia Commons )
Monday's meeting of the 11th Executive Committee of the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), the committee's second gathering of this kind, announced before the Beijing venue that 33,000 left-behind women's cooperatives were established last year.
The developments of 2014 mean that there are presently around 300,000 women's cooperatives set up in China.
Song Xiuyan, vice president and first member of the Secretariat of the ACWF, spoke of the cooperatives that were introduced to cater for those rural-based women left behind after their male partners are forced to relocate to urban areas for work opportunities.
Due to the increased burden faced by the women in the areas of both work and home, the ACWF worked in conjunction with women's federations to establish women's cooperatives in villages throughout the nation.
The cooperatives may consist of a group of eight to 10 women, and a leader, who becomes responsible for overseeing the affairs of the cooperative, is elected by the members. In terms of location, women's homes or women's rights protection stations are typically utilized.
Additionally, farming cooperatives have been sought out for collaborative arrangements in which left-behind women are given opportunities to launch farming businesses as a means of income generation.
The vice president informed committee members that women's cooperatives have been successful in facilitating a greater degree of women's participation in societal matters. The news was publicized during a time period when the number of left-behind women has risen considerably.
The ACWF was also involved with charitable initiatives in 2014, raising more than 1 billion yuan ($160 million) to complete projects like the Spring Bud Project and the Health Express for Mothers program.
