During the early 1920s, New Culture intellectuals frequently deployed the "new woman" trope as the personification of an idealized modernity, constituted in relation to its Confucian, traditional, other. Though this discourse is often cited in historical scholarship, the origins of the Chinese "new woman" preceded the advent of the New Culture Movement, and her sociocultural meanings often exceeded descriptions espoused by affiliated male intellectuals. Emerging from the women's education movement of the late Qing period (1644-1912), the "new woman" remained a highly contested representation of conflicting visions of Chinese modernity throughout the early twentieth century.
This work demonstrates the instability and adaptability of the "new woman" trope through a case study of the most widely circulated women's periodical in Republican China, The Ladies’ Journal (Funü zazhi). An examination of The Ladies' Journal suggests that prevalent discourses of the "new woman," much like the goals of the broader women's movement, shifted with China's sociopolitical landscape through the periods of the early Republic (1915-1918), the New Culture Era (1919-1925), and the early Guomindang (Naitonalist Party) state (1926-1931). This work troubles definitions of "feminism" rooted in the politics of the recent West. Though many men and women in Republican China proposed methods of improving gender relations, these figures rarely embodied the ideals of Western-oriented feminists of the late twentieth century. Rather than deem these historical figures as less than feminist based on present notions, this work notes the complexities and particularities of "feminism (funü zhuyi)" in Republican China.