Going public through writing

Abstract

This article examines the historical emergence of a women's public sphere in early 20th-century China, a time when modernization was at the top of the national agenda, by looking at how some women — who belonged to the scholar-gentry class and had experience of the West — became journalists. These women carved out a distinctively women's public sphere by establishing a press that was both for women and by women. While Chinese male intellectuals envisioned women's press merely as instrument for enlightening and educating women, women journalists promoted women's journalism as a public forum, particularly for women to participate in discussions of modernization. Struggling against the fact that women in China were traditionally perceived as a subordinate and incapable group, these women journalists had to utilize their elite background to claim credit for their writings and secure their place in the public discursive field.