Research On Women's Rehabilitation Home In Postwar Shanghai (1946-1949)

This thesis focuses on the history of the Women's Rehabilitation Home in postwar Shanghai(1946-1949).Understanding social relief as the governance of the urban indigent,this thesis explores the situation of lower-class women in municipal governance in postwar Shanghai,and the distinction class identity drew within women's gender identity.The establishment of the Women's Rehabilitation Home in postwar Shanghai was the result of the social relief system built by Nationalist Government,as well as the social turbulence in postwar Shanghai.Shanghai Women's Rehabilitation Home combined the relief of lower-class women with training,and many middle-class women took posts in it.The Women's Rehabilitation Home isolated the lower-class women from society,and enforced on them strict regulation,trying to remould them into moral and productive female nationals.However,corruption and violence existed in its functioning.In the bail bonds,the families of the lower-class women explained their own living condition while replying to the Women's Rehabilitation Home's discourse and practice.The process of bailing was filled with conflicts.This thesis will demonstrate,that in the context of postwar Shanghai social governance,class identity broke the coherent gender identity of women,and that in the male-dominated political discourse,both middle-class and lower-class women were confronted with the danger of disperse of their own agency.