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 (cain) to professional women journalists
(nbaoren) 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.
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