Going Public Through Education: Female Reformers and Girls' Schools in Late Qing Beijing

The establishment of girls' schools during the late Qing period represented a major turning point in Chinese women's history, as traditional, home-based education for girls gradually evolved into a modern popular educational system. Girls' schools served as vehicles for social change, offering women an exit from the inner chamber into the public arena.

The theoretical framework that divides a given society into a public sphere dominated by men and a private sphere associated with women invites skepticism, criticism, and debate. ² Many scholars have argued that a gendered division of social spheres demonstrates socially constructed, historically created, and culturally differentiated hierarchies of power and social relations. ³ The notion of "gendered" spheres owes heavily to Western liberalism and Marxism; ⁴ yet historical research frequently demonstrates that boundaries between these domains overlap, interact, and/or mutually penetrate by other means. ⁵

Scholars of Chinese history have also shown a rigid division of social domains between the sexes to be unrealistic and questionable. Although the Confucian ideal of gender distinctions divided Chinese society into an inner (nei) sphere for women and an outer (wai) sphere for men, the margins of the two spheres were always blurred and mutable. While men were mediators between the two spheres, women enjoyed a certain degree of freedom in the outside world. ⁶ When social conditions were undergoing change, women were more likely to penetrate into male territory. A well-known example of this tendency, as documented in the recent feminist scholarship, involves female writing and publishing during the Ming and the Qing dynasties. ⁷ The inner/outer dichotomy, therefore, is "a relational category that describes a series of nested hierarchies whose boundary changes with context." ⁸

The unprecedented transgression of gender boundaries by women was prompted by modernizing initiatives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women participated in political movements and social reforms, entered factories, and became trained professionals. I use the phrase "going public" to describe this new trend, as women left their homes, intermingled with men, and acquired different functions in the society. ⁹ For women, the notion "public" could suggests a gender gap, a new terrain of competition, and the development of a feminist movement. ¹⁰ In early twentieth-century China, a more opened public domain associated with Western thought and the process of nation building presented diverse opportunities to women. In contrast to domestic monotony, the potential of a life that unfolded in public, with possibilities to both fulfill individual aspirations and serve public interests, appealed greatly to many young and educated women. Going public, or crossing the boundaries of a prescribed inner-outer dichotomy, actually constituted a revolt by Chinese women against prescribed social prejudices and exclusivity.

Chinese women developed and used girls' schools as stepping stones for the "going public" movement. During the late Qing, these schools did not constitute a discrete "public" domain, but rather an institution on the margins of that domain. Girls' schools both segregated and brought the sexes together, engaging women in public concerns and activities. The Qing government, nationalist rhetoric, and the Confucian notion of gender distinctions supported domestic-oriented education for girls. Consequently, girls' schools could be viewed as a unique "women's sphere," in which women served as principals, teachers, and students. Although women in this new field developed a consciousness of gender equality and rights, they still did not compete for careers and positions of power traditionally occupied by men. The wall of gendered separatism was eroding nonetheless, due to frequent public discussions over legitimate male/female roles, governmental reforms which began transforming the type of education deemed necessary for girls, and increased involvement of men in women's education. The boundaries of the two domains were further transcended, as women participated in the workplace, acquired access to Western ideas, science, and political issues. Female educators, journalists, and organization leaders collectively promoted the...