Women Journalists and Feminism in China, 1898–1937 By Yuxin Ma

with the earliest materials with feminist themes produced by Chinese women and provide us with information on how women looked at feminist issues at a time when the country was experiencing waves of nationalism and responding to political and social changes. Women's media writings in the early decades of the twentieth century not only revealed the historical diversity and complexity of feminist issues in China but also brought up 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 is about how women journalists constructed Chinese feminism and debated patriarchy and women's roles in the newly created public space of print media in 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 worked together to undermine Confucian notions of gender hierarchy, spatial separation of the sexes, and female domesticity among 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 and 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.