The book considers how conceptions of women's roles have changed as China has moved from state socialism to engagement with capitalist globalization, examines the growth of women's gender and sexual consciousness and social movements for women's rights, including for marginalized social and sex/gender grouops, and discusses women's roles in society-state interactions.

This book explores the extent to which women have been initiators, mobilizers, and driving forces of social transformation in China. The book considers how conceptions of women’s roles have changed as China has moved from state socialism to engagement with capitalist globalization, examines the growth of women’s gender and sexual consciousness and social movements for women’s rights, including for marginalized social and sex/gender grouops, and discusses women’s roles in society-state interactions, including many forms of social activism, cultural events, educational innovations, and more. Overall, the book demonstrates that women have not simply been passive receivers of the consequences of the forces of global capitalism, but that they have had a profound, active impact on social transformation in China.

This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars from China and the West to examine the many dimensions of debate around gender issues in contemporary China. The experiences of women in education, employment, marriage and the family, in rural and urban areas are analysed and assessed.

In the process of helping women to help themselves, female activists have assumed a decisive role in negotiating social and political transformations in Chinese society. This is the first book that describes and analyzes the new phase of women's organizing in China, which started in the 1980s, and remains a vital force to the present day. The political and social changes taking place in contemporary Chinese society have, surprisingly, received scant attention. This volume enriches our understanding of the working of grassroots democracy in China by exploring women's popular organizing activities and their interaction with party-state institutions. By subjecting these activities to both empirical enquiry and theoretical scrutiny, a rigorous analysis of the exchange, dialogue, negotiation and transformation among and within three groups of political actors - popular women's groups, religious groups and the All China Women's Federation - is concisely presented to the reader. This book will be of tremendous interest to students of Chinese Studies, Political Science and Gender Studies alike.

A most remarkable change took place in the first half of the twentieth century in China--women journalists became powerful professionals who championed feminist interests, discussed national politics, and commented on current social events by editing independent periodicals. The rise of modern journalism in China provided literate women with a powerful institution that allowed them articulate women's presence in the public space. In editing women's periodicals, women writers transformed themselves from traditional literary women (cainü) to professional women journalists (nübaoren) in the period of 1898-1937 when journalism became increasingly independent of and resistant to state control. The women's media writings in the early decades of the twentieth century not only reveal the historical diversity and complexity of feminist issues in China but also casts light upon important feminist topics that have survived the Nationalist, Communist, and economic reform eras. Today, public debate on women's issues in Mainland China and Taiwan is shaped by past feminist discourse and uses a vocabulary and language familiar to readers of an earlier era. This book examines how women journalists constructed Chinese feminism and debated patriarchy and women's roles in the newly created public space of print media during the period of 1898-1937. It studies Chinese women's public writings in periodicals edited and staffed by women journalists in four major urban centers-Shanghai, Tokyo, Beijing, and Tianjin at a time when urban society underwent major transformation and experienced drastic political, social, and cultural changes. The revolution that overthrew the imperial government in 1911; an attack on patriarchy by cultural radicals in 1915-1919; and the advocacy of nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and feminism by intellectuals who received a Western-style education all worked together to undermine the Confucian notions of gender hierarchy, spatial separation of the sexes, and female domesticity among the well-educated urban classes. Doors of political participation, public activism, and production cracked open for courageous women who ventured into urban public spaces. From 1898 to 1937, urban women of the upper, middle, and working classes became increasingly visible at modern schools, as well as in career and production fields, political activism, and women's movements. At the same time, women edited independent periodicals and championed women's rights. Women's periodicals provided a site where writers negotiated with nationalism, patriarchy, and party lines to define and defend women's interests. These early feminist writings captured how activists perceived themselves and responded to the social and political changes around them. This book takes a historical approach in its examination and uses gender as an analytical category to study the significance of women's press writings in the years of nation building. Treating women journalists as agents of change and using their media writings as primary sources, this book explores what mattered to women writers at different historical junctures, as well as how they articulated values and meaning in a changing society and guided social changes in the direction they desired. It delineates the transformation of women journalists from political-minded Confucian gentry women to professional journalists, and of women's periodicals from representing women journalists' views to addressing the concerns and needs of the majority of women. It analyzes how the concepts of "feminism" and "nationalism" were embodied with different--even contesting--meanings at given historical junctures, and how women journalists managed to advance various feminist agendas by tapping on the various meanings of nationalism. This is an important book for collections in Asian studies, journalism history, and women's studies.

On China's biggest social media platform, Weibo, feminists are staying one step ahead of the censors. Weibo Feminism is the first book to explore in-depth the connections and forms of resistance that feminist activists in China are making in online spaces despite increasing crackdowns on free speech and public expression. Aviva Wei Xue and Kate Rose explore the many forms of contemporary feminism in China, from activist campaigns against sexual harassment and domestic violence, through to Weibo Reading groups of feminist texts and subversive online novels published on the platform. The book includes an in-depth case study of feminist support networks for overwhelmingly female frontline medical staff that have sprung up on social media in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Weibo Feminism goes on to asks what lessons are being learned in contemporary China for the cause of social justice for women around the world.