A Study On The Revival And Development Of Women's Colleges And Universities In China Since The1980s

Since the building of the first women's college in the world, the existence of women's colleges and universities is related with the two issues of whether women should receive education and what kind of education should women receive. Because of gender discrimination, women, basically, were not considered to receive education when men received education generally. With the great effort of the western feminists, women gained the right to receive education. In order to prove that women can not only receive education and can learn the contents which are as difficult as men do, the same courses and standards as men's colleges and universities were taken in western women's colleges and universities. When Christian opened women's colleges and universities in China, they upheld the school running concept of the western women's Colleges and universities. The building of the women's colleges and universities throughout the world became an important form of education in the transition to the society of equality between men and women.Under the requirements of the prosperity of the country and race reproduction, women's education is proposed actively in China. However, women's colleges and universities in China are mainly normal universities aiming to train teachers for the country whose courses meet the need of the primary and high school teaching. Different from ordinary mixed colleges and universities, women's colleges pay special attention to domestic science. After The Educational Rights Campaign, the domestic science in Christian women's colleges and universities received great attention whose graduates were mainly engaged in teaching. Women's colleges and universities are an important supplement of women's higher education.With the implementation of the policy of reform and opening up, Non-governmental schools are encouraged and women's colleges and universities rose again in the mid1980s after over thirty years of disappearance. People begin to reconsider how to better educate students according to different genders. The proportion of the women's higher education is small. Women's colleges and universities began to appear, mainly aiming to train women talents in all walks of life. The majors and courses are mainly about liberal arts education, which is considered to be suitable for female's physiological and psychological characteristics. And it also accords with the requirements of subject structure adjustment of higher education in the1980s. Besides, liberal arts education can be managed without too much equipment. However, it left a hidden danger to the later development of women's colleges and universities.The development of women's colleges and universities since the1980s has experienced three stages of discovery, adjustment and steady development. The development is closely related to education system reform, the deepening of reform and opening up, the expansion of higher education and so on. However, in the face of social change, the development of women's colleges and universities is still fragile, because these reforms didn't touch the deep social gender problem. Beijing World Women' Conference and the basic national policy of gender equality are two major events affecting the development of women's colleges and universities. Since2000, the development of the Women's colleges and universities in our country has been stable basically with in-depth exploration and they have been establishing the development path of characteristics running-school:setting the female course on the basis of general professionals, emphasizing on quality education, popularizing gender awareness and assuming more women studies and women education researches.However, the present running of Women's colleges and universities is still at the stage of features exploration. Its overall level is low without obvious characteristics. Especially, the evaluation of students is not high. There is less innovation and campus life satisfaction is not high. They will affect women's college and universities later sustainable development.