Gender, Family and Nation: Cohesion and Conflict Among Christian Women Intellectuals at China’s Christian Universities

Abstract

This article draws on materials from the archives of two Christian women’s universities, namely Ginling CollegeGinling College in Nanjing and Hwa Nan Women’s CollegeHwa Nan Women’s College in Fuzhou, to explore both the cohesion and conflict among Christian women as a social group in China. In the past Christian women tended to be described as a homogeneous and united social group. However, this group had differences in culture, nationality, and race, and thus their identify in relation to gender, family and nationality may more realistically be characterized as a kind of cultural confrontation between Chinese women and their Western partners at Christian universitiesChristian universities, in terms of both collaboration and conflict. These special features were particularly evident in the development of ‘relationships’ among women intellectuals in the two Christian universities under study. Therefore, this article attempts to take the perspective of modern social history as an interplay between globalization and localization processes in China’s Christian women’s universities. The case of Ginling and Hwa Nan Women’s Colleges provide a vivid illustration of the formation process of modern Chinese Christian women intellectuals in terms of issues of gender identity and family tradition with both conflicts and areas of agreement.