ABSTRACT
The historical experience of Chinese and Japanese women reflects some striking differencesa. Although in the late nineteenth century strong reform movements existed to protect women, Hall (1997) argues that the communist revolution was the "single most important event in the history of Chinese women". Daniels (1988) notes that Asians traditionally existed outside the canon of immigrant history in the United States. That is, the study of immigration to the United States typically focused on Europe. When Asian-American women described who they included in their immediate family, nine of them described an extended family and five described a nuclear family. In the survey, both traditional power and personal authority attributes emerged most frequently as the models of power with which these Asian-American women agreed. The women also agreed with all but one of the reciprocal empowerment attributes, and the reciprocal empowerment attributes that received the highest level of agreement were all associated with personal authority.
