Western Scholar' Study On The History Of Chinese Women In The Last Three Decades

This paper mainly states on issues of Chinese women which was researched by western scholars over the three decades. Aimed at giving a comprehensive overview of the major development course; focused on the analysis of their study characteristics; explore the problems arisen in the research process.The article contains three sections. The first section deals with the development of western women history. In this period there is no specialized theory on studying Women's History, but just excavated the records about women in the historical documents as more as possible. Then along with the development of feminist movement, a history of feminist which fight for women's rights shows on. The study on women in this period has the"feminist"theory as a guide. However, because of emphasizing the feminine rights, it reflects stronger political tendentiousness. The studies of"social gender history", emerged in recent years, only regard the gender perspective as a dimension of history research and set right the status of women study. The first part is the theoretical foundation and academic background of the full text. Many western scholars have been on the study of Chinese women for long. They are bold to introduce many studying theories of Western Women into China, but also notice that such theories themselves have undergone a process which develops gradually to be mature, and need to continue to debug with China's special conditions.The second part is about the characteristics of Chinese women study done by western scholars. On study theory, it absorbs the essence of many academic schools, such as New History,"China Centered Approach", Social History and so on. And then forms its own special brand of research theory on"Social Gender"; On study method, it is bold to broaden the sources of Chinese women study according to the thought of cross-disciplinary, such as women first-hand material, literary works, ancient medicine books, oral history of anthropology and rural investigation, etc; On study direction, the traditional Chinese women studies main focuses on condescending elite, and modern and contemporary women's studies begin to turn to the women of lower levels. The last part discusses the problems appeared in the study of Chinese women's issues by Western scholars. For example, the levels of China's opening up impact on in-depth degree of study, the theory of western women history study and China's condition dislocate, as well as language barriers exist and the sources limit women's study. The last two parts are the main body and also the main highlights of this article. Since 1980s, the monographs of western scholars for Chinese women's study emerge in endlessly, while the comprehensive researches in this respect are few in number. This paper is aimed to seek a breakthrough in this respect and get some achievement.