1920년대 중국의 모성과 직업 담론―《婦女雜志》를 중심으로

Abstract

《Women’s Magazine》(Funüzazhi) is a magazine about feminist movement and its transition in the early 20th century Chinese New Culture Era and was published from 1915 to 1931. Read primarily by female students and housewives with medium level education, 《Women’s Magazine》 introduced various issues, such as good housewives, new women, marriage and divorce, family problems, prostitutes and socialist women. This paper analyzes articles in 《Women’s Magazine》 to study the process of how women’s range of jobs increased after the First World War. Moreover, this paper also discusses whether it is reasonable that females have jobs, as the number of women with jobs increases, and how to solve the conflict between working and motherhood. Through this analysis, the oppressed reality of women’s lives that surfaced from the private sphere to the public sphere can be demonstrated in detail. Motherhood was praised as “national mother”, shaped as a collective cultural concept during the 19th western revolutionist movement. Even though Ellen Key’s theory that working can damage motherhood became prevalent in the motherhood debate, it could not prevent women from working. Pregnancy and birth is about sex, and thus natural, while nurture is about gender, and thus a consequence of socioculture. The problem with motherhood myths is that women are overwhelmed disproportionately with costs of nurture. 《Women’s Magazine》 can be regarded as the first voice about women’s independence after May 1st New Culture Era. Society demanded that women transform from good housewives to independent working women during the period between 1910 to 1920. However, as more women had jobs and became independent, traditional views were expressed. As expectations about women’s jobs and those about the role in a family crashed, the choice between work and family became one of the major problems that women in 20’s face. The conflict between the role as a good housewife and a working woman introduced in the modern China is an ongoing problem that is yet to be solved. In the current times, where women’s participation in the public sphere is increasingly active, giving birth and nurturing the next generation are not only in the private sphere but also important issues in the public sphere that need to be solved to prevent women’s tendency to not have babies.