A New Way of Looking: Gender and the Education of Chinese Women in the Colonial World

Abstract This essay reflects on my research and teaching on the history of gender and education, specifically with respect to the schooling history of Chinese women in the colonial world. In doing so, it aims to propose an alternate way of seeing the silent and missing figures in the colonial archives: the subordinated, marginalized, feminine colonial subjects. Commonly framed as orphaned, wounded, and diseased bodies in the historical research on the colonial era, these women were rendered as part of the “problem” that the colonial government ought to fix. It was through “them,” the disenfranchised Chinese females, that the missionary and the colonial state found their meaning and purpose. By the early twentieth century, although Chinese women’s education in the colonial context shifted from a discourse of evangelization to one of modernization, the function of women’s schooling remained constant: The feminine figure was still a platform through which the colonial government projected much of its civilizing ambition and desires for modernity. However, if one reads beyond the colonial archives and the paradigm of colonial subject as “recipient” and focuses instead on the archives of everyday life, one can see Chinese feminine figures as the triumphant masters of modern life. This essay traces this paradigm shift and argues that “gender” is an analytical tool capable of unearthing the hidden figures of modernity.