Women's Studies in Taiwan: My Personal Experience as a Woman Scholar

Abstract

When I wrote my dissertation on female rural-urban I was unaware of the term `feminism in the literature of geography. But geography always borrows from other disciplines and `feminist geography therefore comes about naturally among the social sciences. My Ph. D. dissertation entitled Female Rural-urban Migration Adaptation and Linkages focused on rural women who came to work in Taipei in the late 1970s. I had some arguments with my advisory committee at the time (at the University of Hawaii) about the significance of this issue in the context of Taiwans development but received little support. In fact I found three or four dissertations written by male scholars (Parish Speare and Huang) who studied only young male migrants in Taiwan but called their works migration rather than male studies. As I started my Ph. D. in 1974 leaving my husband and children in Taiwan I had not expected myself to invite so much curiosity and criticism from my neighbors and the Taiwanese students of the East-West Center. It was very clear that educated women in the 1970s in Taiwan did not pursue their careers without inviting some degree of animosity and going abroad for a Ph. D. was unheard of at the time. At times I thought I would give up my studies but then I felt determined to reach my goal. In 1980 having returned to Taiwan to do fieldwork teach and do research I left my husband son and daughter in the care of my parents for one year to complete my dissertation. (authors)