SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

This research is interested in the attitudes and policies of the Guomindang party-state towards subaltern female groups – female sex workers, female farmers, and female factory workers – in the New Life Movement of China as part of a larger interest in women’s history and state-society relations. Was the experience of lower-class women in the New Life Movement different from that of other groups of women? What role did they play in the Guomindang’s social governance and war mobilization? Did the New Life Movement, a self-proclaimed sweeping reform campaign, advance gender equality and women’s liberation as hoped? Drawing on theories of subaltern studies, gender, and feminism, this research attempts to answer these questions by examining a wealth of first-hand historical material from contemporary magazines, journals, and newspapers. I found that the New Life Movement made substantial efforts to improve the lives of subaltern women groups through gentle and educational discourse, investment in establishing relief agencies, and training and dispatch of volunteers and cadres. However, the patriarchal or national agendas lurking behind the New Life Movement propaganda and wide discontent caused by the New Life Movement policies suggest not only the critical role of women in strengthening state power but also the wrenching social transition from tradition to modernity in the 1930s and 1940s.