Modernity And The Role Change Of Chinese Women

With the modernization of China in the 20th century, the social roles of Chinese women have been changed constantly. This article explores the representative images of Chinese women in different history stages through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the reports about outstanding women and the covers in the journey of'Chinese Women', 1949-2007. It also analyses the changes of role's characters that the women's images changes from nonsexual to feminity, from the labor women to the excellent ones in walks of life and from the collectivism value to the individual endeavor.There are many complex reasons coursing these changes and two factors will be discussed. Observed individually it is the conflict between the career role and family one that leads to the adjusted roles of women. However, the pursuing for modernity always becomes the social factor which affects the changes of women's roles. In the Mao's era, the acquirement of vocational role of women is considered to be an important symbol of modernity. However, this symbol have been fade away in the Post-Mao's era and it turns to be the abundant commodities, sexual image, multiple thinking, etc, which leads to the regression of feminity and the raise of subject consciousness.