Women's Studies in China

Author(s): Li Xiaojiang and Li Hui

Source: NWSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring, 1989), pp. 458-460
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 Focus on China

Women's Studies in China

Li Xiaojiang and Li Hui

Early in this century, under the impetus of Western feminist movements,

progressive Chinese scholars began to write books and articles on wom-
en's life and status. Some looked to the past and discovered famous
women heroines, rulers, and literary figures, limiting their efforts largely
to the fields of history and literature. From the foundation of New
China in 1949 to the early 1980s there were few significant studies on
women, so Chinese women's studies, in the modern sense, has a history
of only a few years. The new birth of women's studies in China probably
results both from the urgency of women's problems in contemporary
Chinese social reform and from the influence of Western feminist thought.
Presently two forces contribute to women's studies. One is the Wom-
en's Federation, whose chief task at all levels from the state to the
commune is to tackle women's problems. The studies the Federation
sponsors stress the close relationship of women's issues to practical reality.
Owing to the pressure of China's current social reform, the pace of
organization has recently quickened. Since the second half of 1985,
many provincial and municipal women's federations have successively
set up women's issues associations or similar societies. Though these
organizations grew like mushrooms, their quality has been unsatisfactory.
Lacking specialized personnel and the cooperation of academic circles,
the associations raised problems that could not be researched in depth,
either from a theoretical or a practical angle. But the posing of women's
problems and the call for gender theories have awakened the public
and attracted attention in all fields.
The second force is the academic community. Through scholarly
study, women are observed in relation to the cultural and historical
background so as to fill in the gaps left by the traditional work in the
humanities. After the downfall of the "Gang of Four" when academic
studies were returning to their proper path, some scholars became
interested in women's studies and published articles in many magazines
and newspapers - primarily literary, sociological, and historical. Some
universities even offered courses on women's literature and history, yet

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Li Xiaojiang and Li Hui,
Department of English, Peking University, Beijing, CHINA 100871.

NWSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1989, pp. 458-460

458

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 Women Studies in China 459

this was the spontaneous action of individual scholars; the topics were
limited and accidental.
The spontaneous academic interest in women's studies sprang up, not
in the major urban centers such as Beijing or Shanghai but in Henan
Province in the central area of China.' Rong Tiesheng, a professor in
the History Department of Henan University, offered an elective course
"History of the Modern Chinese Women's Movement" in 1984, lectured
to students drawn from the entire nation in a "Women's Movement"
series in 1986, and enrolled three graduate students in this specialty in
1987. Li Xiaojiang, assistant professor in the Department of Chinese at
Zhengzhou University, offered an elective course "Women's Literature"
in 1985, gave a series of lectures on "Chinese Women's Self-Under-
standing" in 1985, and opened a "Women and Home Economics" class
in cooperation with the cadre's school of Henan Women's Federation.
The textbook Women and Home Economics has been published by Henan
People's Press. Henan universities have taken the lead in the field of
women's studies among all Chinese universities and colleges.
In March 1985 a "Women's Society," the first nonofficial women's
organization, was established under the Henan Future Society. It held
the first women's studies conference in Zhengzhou in August 1985, with
participants from the universities and institutions of eight provinces and
cities. The thirty participants were mostly young women scholars who
had recently earned their M.A. degrees. This conference was the first
"group" action in the field of women's studies in China. The arrange-
ments were self-supported, and most presenters came at their own
expense, which is uncommon in China. Since this meeting, Henan has
begun to be established as the center of Chinese women's studies.
In May 1987 the Center for Women's Studies at Zhengzhou University
was formally established and became the pioneering academic institution
in the field, positing scientific study and teaching as its main tasks, and
social consultation and information exchange as subordinate functions.
In July 1987, the Center held a "Founding Conference of Women's
Studies." Compared with the meeting in 1985 this conference fully
revealed the great progress achieved in Chinese women's studies in a
strong academic atmosphere, with well-defined research fields in a range
of disciplines. At the conference scholars exchanged information on
women's studies in every discipline; the contemporary women's move-
ment and women's studies in America, Britain, West Germany, Japan,
and Canada were all introduced.
In China the concept of "women's science" or "women's studies" as
a discipline was raised rather late, but it takes off from a fairly high

'See Wan Shanping, "The Emergence of Women's Studies in China," Womnenz's Studies
Iiuterniationtal Forumii 11 (1988): 455-64, on women's studies outside Henan Province.

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 460 Li Xiaojiang and Li Hui

starting point. Borrowing from the achievements of Western women's

studies, examining its successes and failures, and actively cooperating
with the domestic women's groups, intellectuals, educators, and jour-
nalists, Chinese women's studies will probably find the right path in a
short time. There are a number of reasons for such optimism:

1. Chinese women's studies has already won the cooperation of

intellectuals and the understanding and support of all social forces,
especially women. The conference held in the summer of 1987
offers obvious evidence. News agencies and academic journals
warmly reported the meeting. True, some people do not under-
stand "women's studies," and some even object to such a notion;
but not supporting is not equivalent to actively opposing. In
China, many social circles (including the political circle) are fairly
tolerant of women's studies, just as they are tolerant of the basic
concept of women's liberation.
2. Chinese women's studies has undergone the transformation from
spontaneity to consciousness. When women's studies first started,
most of its scholars were women, but very soon the gender line
was broken and quite a few male academics joined in. Among
the twenty definite contributors to the Women's Studies Series,
for example, twelve are male and most are rather prominent
scholars. The publication of the series will surely promote Chinese
women's studies.
3. Though the Center for Women's Studies at Zhengzhou University
is under construction at present, it has already completed its first
stages. Zhengzhou University has placed women's studies among
the leading programs of scientific research, and the Center is
now applying to become one of the important programs at pro-
vincial and national levels. It intends to hire qualified scholars,
to offer school-wide women's studies courses, and to enroll grad-
uate students in the next few years. The Center will become a
focal point for information exchange and intellectual discussion,
and it will play an important role in helping women's studies
onto university platforms, in training research personnel, in
strengthening international and domestic communication, and in
solving women's problems in Chinese society.

It seems too early to define fully the concept and scope of Chinese
women's studies. Though recent work has tended to be carried out
within traditional humanities disciplines, a number of people have re-
alized the necessity of treating women's studies as an independent dis-
cipline and are probing possible approaches. Chinese scholars are already
contributing their substantial part to women's studies and helping make
it a truly global endeavor.

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