Female Agency in Rural Public Participation: Actions and Strategies for Empowering Social Organizations in Dilemmas

Current grassroots social governance in China advocates the participation of multiple entities, represented by social organizations. However, social organizations often face mismatches between supply and demand, low levels of specialization, and a lack of resources and talent when providing services. Given previous research exploring the institutional environment of social organizations, this paper focuses on the agency of actors within these organizations and their interactive relationship with the organization. It finds that rural women can become enablers of the growth of social organizations in distress and intermediary roles for promoting local social operations, which contests the stereotype about womens vulnerability. This article compares, inducts and analyzes six empirical cases based on the "Role-Agency" framework, and categorizes rural womens roles and agencies in empowering social organizations in distress into four groups. The analysis of these action strategies will provide social organizations with more paths to improve service models and promote social advocacy.