A Study Of Women's Education And Career In Modern Shanghai

In the early 20 th century,with the development of the Reform Movement,women's education began to rise in China.During the decades,women have been walking out of boudoirs,into schools and the workplace,gaining the chance of being independent and liberated.This change has been particularly dramatic and varied in Shanghai,a modern metropolis.This study aims to study how women's educational life and career in modern Shanghai started and evolved after schools and workplaces were opened to them.Through the description and analysis of the vision of women's education and career in modern Shanghai,it explores the process of the extension of women's living space and the change of their life tracks during the first half of the 20 th century.This paper mainly discusses how ordinary Shanghai women have entered modern education and workplaces,and how their visions of education and occupations have evolved,and how education has affected women's careers and self-realization.The study starts from the development of Shanghai women's school education to the founding of New China from 1900 to 1949.The female groups involved are mainly composed of middle and lower-level women in this study,which explores the education and professional careers of those silent ordinary women.There are four chapters in the main text.The first chapter examines the changes of gender and social life of women in modern Shanghai in a broader sense from the perspective of relationship between urban and social gender and women's education.It is intended to illustrate that the changes of social life in modern Shanghai reshape women's social gender,and to describe the general situation of women's education and careers in modern Shanghai,and to find women's self-interpretation in it.The study object of the second chapter is the female teachers in modern education.They became professional educators with the development of modern education,and they also show multiple characteristics in this occupation,which has both traditional nature and modernity.The third chapter mainly analyzes the status of women's education and career in the new occupational fields such as business,medical care,and publicutilities that have emerged with the development of modern cities,and shows the ecological appearance of the new professional women's class.The fourth chapter describes industrial women workers represented by textile women workers who grew up in modern industry.The traditional social structure made them hard to approach to educational resources and opportunities.However,they participated in the most advanced productive forces and production relations and achieved self-realization and liberation in a common and broad sense.The study adopts the methods of narrative research and oral history.In the study process,the researchers selectively interviewed 14 ordinary women or their spouses who had received education or had worked before 1949.Their occupations included industrial workers,teachers,office clerks,medical staff,freelancers,etc.From their narration,it can vividly reproduce several aspects and profile the education and career of modern women.This study attempts to place modern women in the context of changing eras and societies based on the rich achievements in relevant fields,and to describe women's educational processes and careers from the perspective of women who received education and took up occupations,and to restore the true history from the first-hand oral account and the original archive,so as to provide a new perspective to interpret the interaction between education and female career development and self-realization.The picture of ordinary women's education and professional career in modern Shanghai is part of the macro-history of the city and women,which has been accompanied by the changes of the city and times,and has promoted and changed the track of history.Women's social gender and social roles have undergone a complete transformation in the process of women's education and career evolution in modern Shanghai.Women gained social recognition and self-reform in education who became more engaged in the education process and found their places in education.The education of women of different industries has a very different relationship with careers.In terms of education and medical care,society provides relatively more career opportunities to women.Thus,women education conducted for this aspects have relatively complete professionalism,and the connection between education andcareer is very direct and close.For the others,the relationship between education and career is not one-to-one correspondence.They emerged along with the process of urban occupational ecology modernization which have provided vivid career samples for modern Shanghai.The influence of education on women's careers and self-development is diversified.In modern Shanghai which old and new coexists and of rapid changes,the contradictions and perplexities of women in self-recognition are particularly distinctive.The self-identity and cognition of women are constantly changing.The awakening of women's self-consciousness in education and career fields is a process full of struggles.However,women achieved self-redemption during social transformation in the end and gradually approached women's autonomy in education,in gender roles,and in career.