Beijing Women's Federation

To know the difficulties and needs of rural businessesin Beijingthat have been appointed as demonstration sites for women's businesses and supported by women's federations when they resumed production, the Beijing Women's Federation (BWF) and women's federations at district level haveconducted surveys on the progress of work resumption via WeChat groups and phone calls and even through on-the-spot investigations.

There are 548 demonstration sites for women's businesses in Beijing, 60 percent of which are engaged in planting of fruits, vegetables and grains; their main products include flowers and medicinal herbs. Leisure tourism businesses account for 26 percent, with catering, breeding and processing businesses taking up the balance.At present, most planting businesses have resumed, some of which have ensured an adequate food supply for Beijing residents during the epidemic period.

These businessesare mainly small and medium-sized, and are trapped by increase in operating costs, shortage of labor and capital and lack of technical support. Under such circumstances, women's federations have extended their hands with demand-oriented measures to help enterprises overcome difficulties.

Dealing with Shortage of Funds

The BWF hasguided district-level federations to made good use of funds for rural women's innovation and entrepreneurshipprojects and the federations haveallocated 16.5 million yuan (US $2.33 million) to 109 projects. According to a notice jointly issued by the municipal bureaus of finance, economy and information technology and statistics, the municipal commission ofdevelopment and reform, and the operations office (Beijing) of the People's Bank of China,key enterprises on the front line of epidemic prevention and control will be offereda 50-percent discount for the interest rate of loans. The BWF has conveyed this information to the demonstration sites for them to get government fiscal support. It has also organized managers of women's businesses to attend a mutual help and learning camp during which experts were invited to interpret burden-reduction policies as response to the COVID-19 outbreak and answer businesswomen's questions.To help enterprises reduce their operating cost by changing their traditional marketing mode, women's federations have introduced them to onlinechannels that promote products through live-broadcasting platforms, based on the capital women's science & technology innovation and entrepreneurship service platform, and offer featured craft training courses. Wu Junling and Wang Guiying, herb growers and residents in Huairou District, have opened their live-streaming accounts and thus increased their income by online marketing.

Dealing with Shortage of Human Resources

The BWF, the municipal human resources and social security bureau and the employment guidance center of the municipal education commission jointly held an online job fair for female college graduates, where 308 enterprises offered 1,354 posts and recruited a total of 11,120 employees.The BWF and the municipal human resources and social security bureau also organized a month-long themed employment promotion activity. To satisfy needs of women's businesses, the Tongzhou District Women's Federation and the Daxing District Women's Federation have relied on online platforms, official WeChat accounts and websitesof women's federations, to organize online recruitment events. The Huairou District Women's Federation and the district's women employment association have built an employment service platform. The Fangshan District Women's Federation held 21 online job fairs involving 131 employers with a total of 12,244 vacancies that helped 1,164 people land jobs, and it cooperated with the district's agricultural and rural affairs bureau to help arrange labor force for each women's businessdemonstration sites to reduce the proportion of migrant workers.

Dealing with Technological Problems

The BWF has used the role of the coordination group for the "double learning, double competitions" campaign (to encourage rural women to learn technologies and make achievements), and paid visits to rural women as it intended to optimize the resources of various member units and build platforms for resource cooperation and technology upgrading for rural women.The agricultural development center of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission sent varieties of vegetable seeds and popular science books to women-focused enterprises in Mentougou District and organized experts to provide technical guidance and solutions via real-time video connections.In response to the needs of agricultural and forestry businesses, the Tongzhou District Women's Federation, in conjunction with the Beijing Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, invited agricultural and forestry experts to a special lecture benefiting farmers, and made live and recorded broadcasts depicting the impact of COVID-19 on intensive seedling breeding and applicable countermeasures.