Mobilising Women: The Women’s Advisory Council, Resistance and Reconstruction during China’s War with Japan

Abstract

This article uses the Women’s Advisory Council of the New Life Movement to show how educated women developed their own concepts of wartime responsibilities as they conducted resistance and social construction programmes. It particularly examines their work with rural women and efforts to improve education, production, life habits and national consciousness. In transferring their vision of China’s development to uneducated compatriots in the interior, the Council cadres attempted to bolster their social authority and prove their leadership abilities. Their work explicates another dimension of the lasting consequences to wartime relief provision.