List of Photos
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Gendered Labor of Empire, 1800–1840
2 Disturbances, 1840–1900
3 Revolutionary Currents, 1895–1912
4 Imagined Futures, 1912–27
5 Regulatory Regimes, 1928–37
6 Wartime Women, 1928–41
7 Wartime Women, 1935–49
8 The Socialist Construction of Women, 1949–78
9 Capitalized Women, 1978–
Glossary
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author
Gail Hershatter is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past and Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century.
It takes rare academic courage and intellectual breadth to dare to
write a book such as this. Gail Hershatter's narrative focus on
women and gender alters what we thought we knew about modern
Chinese history; her case for the centrality of women's labor to
the past and to the present—Chinese or otherwise is compelling,
persuasive, irrefutable. A teachable text, an eminently readable
book, a critical work for our fraught global times.
*Rebecca E. Karl, New York University*
Women and China’s Revolutions asks one of the most important
questions in the study of gender: how does women’s history
intersect with and alter our understanding of Big History? In
answering this question, Hershatter draws on decades of her own
pathbreaking research and synthesizes a vast range of literatures
and approaches. Highly engaging and richly illustrated, this book
brings together rural and urban developments and social and
cultural methodologies in ways that are both illuminating and
unprecedented.
*Joan Judge, York University*
Based on exhaustive reading of the secondary literature, and on her
own deep acquaintance with the history of women and gender in
modern China, Hershatter traces women’s lives over the two
centuries since 1800 through a dual spotlight on women’s labor and
‘Woman’ as symbol of big debates about national strengthening and
social transformation. Hershatter’s analysis demonstrates how a
focus on women and gender raises new questions about mainstream
narratives of China’s modern history. Beautifully and accessibly
written, there is no other volume to compete with this; it should
become essential reading for all students of modern China.
*Harriet Evans, University of Westminster*
This innovative and challenging book looks anew at China since 1800
through the lens of gender—and gives us not just one but many new
perspectives. It is clear and comprehensive enough to use as a core
book in an introductory class, and probing enough to make
established scholars reconsider long-held opinions. From warfare to
popular culture, economics to literature, family life to mass
movements—choose your topic, and Gail Hershatter will help you
reframe it in stimulating ways.
*Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago*
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