ABSTRACT
This chapter embraces both the experiences of women organizing throughout twentieth-century China, and analyses by researchers in the 1970s and in late 1990s. For the 1970s there were probably factors motivating the new research interest in women’s organizations in China. One of these factors was the renewal of women’s movement in Europe and North America, which gave birth to new gender platforms, gender-specific awareness and an array of new women’s organizations and interest in organizational issues. The two interests interrogating women and women in relation to men constituted the practical and conceptual context for initial interest in women’s experience of organizing in China and directed our analytical focus towards exploring three main questions. First the emergence of women’s agendas, activism and networks of organizations, groups and networks; second their effectiveness in crafting a collective identity and developing gender awareness; and third, their organizational relations with other social movements, political parties and the state.
