Going public: The YWCA, 'new' women, and social feminism in Republican China

This dissertation is a study of how Chinese women used the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) to lead public lives in Republican China. I examine a group of women who shared elite backgrounds, Western-style educations and became involved with the YWCA either as lay leaders or professional executives or “secretaries” as they were called. These women reveal the complexity of the social group “new” women (xin funü) because, while they shared many characteristics, they did not necessarily share motivations, aspirations, or sociopolitical ideologies.; The YWCA was one of several Sino-Western institutions that formed an “intercultural zone” which mediated exchanges between China and the West. It mediated institutional, professional and interpersonal relationships that provided women with the means to work out new conceptions of womanhood, experiment with new adaptive behaviors, negotiate new social roles, and to “go public,” the most visible way women defined themselves as “new.”; Central to the question of why these women used the YWCA to “go public” is an understanding of how the Association indigenized to become a Chinese Association. Indigenization included two parallel processes, institution-building and devolution, or the transfer of power and authority from Western to Chinese women. Both processes were fraught with difficulties involving ongoing negotiations between Western and Chinese women as well as between successive generations of Chinese social feminists over issues of power and influence.; The public lives of YWCA lay leaders and secretaries suggest the importance of social feminism among middle class urban women. Many scholars of “new” women in turn-of-the-century Europe and America point out that the majority of middle class women never subscribed to radical ideologies nor sought gender equality. However, neither did they accept social marginalization. They engaged in causes like child welfare and world peace that they could claim as their own because of their natural inclinations to be nurturers and humanitarians.