Chinese Women in the Early Twentieth Century:  Activists and Rebels

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/8g84mn13q

Abstract

It is said that women hold up half the sky, but what roles do women really play and how do they interact with politics and society? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Chinese women reacted in a variety of ways to the social and political changes of the era. Some women were actively engaged in politics while others were not. Some women became revolutionaries and fought for reform in China, other women were more willing to work with and within the established cultural framework. Discussion of reforms and reformers in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries are primarily focused on men and male activism; however, some women felt very strongly about reform and were willing to die in order to help China modernize. This thesis explores the life experiences and activism of five women who lived at the end of China’s imperial period and saw the birth of the Republican period. By analyzing and comparing the experiences of Zheng Yuxiu, Yang Buwei, Xie Bingying, Wang Su Chun, and Ning Lao Taitai, this thesis helps to unlock the complex and often hidden lives of Chinese women in modern Chinese history.

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