"Women Behaving Badly": Crime, Transgressive Behaviour and Gender In Early Twentieth Century China

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses a critical discourse on women that was pervasive in an emerging newspaper and periodical press during the last years of the Qing dynasty and early years of the Republic, at a time when governing and intellectual elites were becoming increasingly obsessed with 'behavioural modernization'. This critical discourse reflected anxieties concerning the pace and direction of social and cultural change, as well as ambivalence about women's growing public visibility. At the same time, such a discourse provides an insight into how adolescent girls and women responded to new opportunities in the public sphere before the May Fourth Movement, and clearly shows they did not always behave in ways prescribed by officials, educators and intellectuals.