Joan Scott

The article “Chinese History: A Useful Category of Gender Analysis” discusses gender in China from the perspective of western thought, the diaspora, and Chinese scholars, and the problem of limited anglophile accounts. Anglophone scholars drew from western ideas of gender and feminism. Joan Scott’s essay became a guide for analyzing female gender and helped to move away from western binary ideas. “Scott's injunction to attend to expanded meanings of gender was important to this reconfiguration of the imperial period.” Women had changing roles and the ability to influence family and society throughout different times. I appreciated the author’s deep dive into the history of gender analysis and the influence of western thought on gender in China. During the workshop at USC and generally, I find that when people view Chinese culture through the lens of western experience and history, they often miss the multilayered complexity of Chinese ideas that have had far longer time to simmer throughout China’s long history. And so, I look forward to the continued study of gender in China by Chinese people. In the classroom, I would like to use this idea of comparing Chinese perspective and Euro-American perspective through primary and secondary text.