In Hong Kong, dissent has a female voice

Christine Loh's civic group helped flood Hong Kong's streets with peaceful protesters last month. Margaret Ng's careful reading of a national security law tied the government in knots. Emily Lau's upstart Frontier party now calls for Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to resign.

What these reformers share, apart from sharp views on basic freedoms, is their gender. To a degree unusual in Asia, women are out front in this summer's "people power" protests in Hong Kong.

Names like Audrey Eu, Gaddis Lee, Anna Wu, and even the venerable Anson Chan may mean little outside this metropolis. But in early July they, and 500,000 marchers, stood up to the Beijing-backed Chief Tung - and Beijing blinked.

Hong Kong's universal education, ethos of opportunity, and international atmosphere have incubated "some pretty extraordinary and able women," as one male academic puts it. Female reformers of many backgrounds are starting to crowd the leadership of civic and legal circles.

"Our similarity is that we are all made in Hong Kong! We are extremely practical people, we haven't been suppressed," says Ms. Ng, a legislator. But, she says, "if men take part in public life, it is expected. Women here have to be better."

The reformers don't see themselves as feminists. They even play down their gender. But these women have gathered forces against Article 23, a bill that would give Hong Kong police vastly greater powers.

After the march, two Tung ministers resigned. Last week they were replaced, setting the stage this fall for a new test of authority in the "special autonomous region."

Now democrats seek a greater "consultative" voice. They want a habit of dialogue with authorities that could lead to talks about free elections in 2007 - something allowed under the governing Basic Law.

Last week a set of Hong Kong scholars - majority female - released a report calling on Tung to revise Article 23 into a single, limited bill. Previously it was divided three ways. The bill seemed to hide the scope of what critics called "draconian" police and security powers including banning groups and jail terms for holding vaguely defined "state secrets" that could simply be embarrassing information.

The spirit of the Hong Kong reform fits into a pattern of female leadership, as described by a late 1990s Harvard University study. It found that current women leaders often emphasize a different set of values from males: consensus, concern for diversity, and an avoidance of authoritarian styles. Yet as author and project coordinator Laura Liswood pointed out, women did not operate only off traditional notions of "compromise," but were willing to take "strong and unpopular stands."

"Hong Kong was the first sweat shop economy, and as females, we rode the crest of the labor-shortages of the 1970s and 80s," says Ms. Loh, whose "Civic Exchange" newsletter is a no-holds-barred probe of Hong Kong's political anatomy. "If you were a girl, it didn't matter. But I don't think this is just a Hong Kong thing; it is a phenomenon around the world."

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