Women and Gender in Chinese Studies


Book Description

The 'State of the World's Girls' report has tackled many topics: girls in the global economy; education; girls affected by conflict and by disaster; the new digital world and its implications, both negative and positive, for girls' lives; the challenges and risks of increasing urbanisation; working with men and boys; and looked at attitudinal, structural and institutional barriers to gender equality.




Gender and Education in China


Book Description

Using primary evidence such as official documents, newspapers and memoirs, Paul Bailey analyzes the significance, impact and nature of women's public education in China from its beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century.




Women, Gender, and Sexuality in China


Book Description

Women, Gender and Sexuality in China: A Brief History serves as a focal textbook for undergraduate courses on women, gender, and sexuality in Chinese history. Thematically structured, it surveys important aspects of gender systems and gender practices throughout Chinese history, from the earliest period to the modern era. Topics include the concept of yin-yang, life course and gender roles, kinship systems and family structure, marriage practices, sexuality, women’s work and daily life, as well as gender in Chinese mythology, religions, medicine, art, and literature. In narrating how various traditions and practices were formed and evolved throughout Chinese history, this textbook draws heavily on personal stories and historical records. Features in this textbook include: Primary source sections for each chapter, introducing students to types of documents that have been used by scholars in conducting research Thirty-three translated texts of various genres, including epitaph, bronze inscription, medical text, imperial edict, legal case, family letter, ghost story, divorce paper, poetry, autobiography, etc. Dedicated biography sections for five distinguished women Offering richly layered accounts of women, gender, and sexuality, this textbook is essential reading for students of Chinese history, gender in world history, or the comparative history of gender.




Women and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Societies


Book Description

Recent attention to historical, geographic, and class differences in the studies of women and gender in China has expanded our understanding of the diversity and complexity of gendered China. Nevertheless, the ethnic dimension of this subject matter remains largely overlooked, particularly concerning women’s conditions and gender status. Consequently, the patriarchy and its oppression of women among the Han, the ethnic majority in China, are often inaccurately or erroneously associated with the whole gendered heritage of China, epitomized by the infamous traditions of footbinding and female-infanticide. Such academic and popular predisposition belies the fact that gender systems in China span a wide spectrum, ranging from extreme Han patriarchy to Lahu gender-egalitarianism. The authors contributing to this book have collectively initiated a systematic effort to bridge the gap between understanding the majority Han and ethnic minorities in regard to women and gender in contemporary Chinese societies. By achieving a quantitative balance between articles on the Han majority and those on ethnic minorities, this book transcends the ghettoization of ethnic minorities in the studies of Chinese women and gender. The eleven chapters of this volume are divided into three sections which jointly challenge the traditions and norms of Han patriarchy from various perspectives. The first section focuses on gender traditions among ethnic minorities which compete with the norms of Han patriarchy. The second section emphasizes the impact of radical social transformation on gender systems and practices among both Han and ethnic minorities. The third section underscores socio-cultural diversity and complexity in resistance to Han patriarchal norms from a broad perspective. This book complements previous scholarship on Chinese women and gender by expanding our investigative lens beyond Han patriarchy and providing images of the multi-ethnic landscape of China. By identifying the Han as an ethnically marked category and by bringing to the forefront the diverse gender systems of ethnic minorities, this book encourages an increasing awareness of, and sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of gendered China both in academia and beyond.




New Modern Chinese Women and Gender Politics


Book Description

The past century witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of modern Chinese women and gender politics. Whilst some revolutionary actions to rectify the feudalist patriarchy, such as foot-binding and polygyny were first seen in the late Qing period; the termination of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of Republican China in 1911-1912 initiated truly nation-wide constitutional reform alongside increasing gender egalitarianism. This book traces the radical changes in gender politics in China, and the way in which the lives, roles and status of Chinese women have been transformed over the last one hundred years. In doing so, it highlights three distinctive areas of development for modern Chinese women and gender politics: first, women’s equal rights, freedom, careers, and images about their modernized femininity; second, Chinese women’s overseas experiences and accomplishments; and third, advances in Chinese gender politics of non-heterosexuality and same-sex concerns. This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on film, history, literature, and personal experience. As such, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, women's studies, gender studies and gender politics.




Gender and Chinese History


Book Description

Until the 1980s, a common narrative about women in China had been one of victimization: women had dutifully endured a patriarchal civilization for thousands of years, living cloistered, uneducated lives separate from the larger social and cultural world, until they were liberated by political upheavals in the twentieth century. Rich scholarship on gender in China has since complicated the picture of women in Chinese society, revealing the roles women have played as active agents in their families, businesses, and artistic communities. The essays in this collection go further by assessing the ways in which the study of gender has changed our understanding of Chinese history and showing how the study of gender in China challenges our assumptions about China, the past, and gender itself.




Modern Women in China and Japan


Book Description

At the dawn of the 1930s a new empowered and liberated image of the female was taking root in popular culture in the West. This 'modern woman' archetype was also penetrating into Eastern cultures, however, challenging the Chinese and Japanese historical norm of the woman as homemaker, servant or geisha. Through a focus on the writings of the Western women who engaged with the Far East, and the Eastern writers and personalities who reacted to this new global gender communication by forming their own separate identities, Katrina Gulliver reveals the complex redefining of the self taking place in a crucial time of political and economic upheaval. Including an analysis of the work of Nobel Prize laureate Pearl S. Buck, The Modern Woman in China and Japan is an important contribution to gender studies and will appeal to historians and scholars of China and East Asia as well as to those studying Asian and American literature.




Engendering the Woman Question: Men, Women, and Writing in China’s Early Periodical Press


Book Description

In Engendering the Woman Question, Zhang Yun examines the early Chinese women’s periodical press as a mixed-gender public space to explore men’s and women’s gender-specific approaches to a series of prominent topics central to the Chinese “woman question.”




Gender and Work in Urban China


Book Description

Drawing upon extensive life history interviews, this book makes the voices of ordinary women workers heard and applies feminist perspectives on women and work to the Chinese situation.




Gender and Power in Rural North China


Book Description

This book explores the link between the everyday relations of gender and the reform of the rural political economy in the 1980's, and argues that the reconstitution of the Chinese state in the reform era draws force and authority from the inherent politics and power of gender.