Gender and Education

Gender, Sexuality and Education in Chinese Contexts

Gender, Sexuality and Education in Chinese Contexts

Scholarship on gender, sexuality and education in Chinese contexts is diverse and growing. At the same time, the very notion of what a Chinese context is understood to be is complex, contestable and subject to critical engagement. Chinese feminism is a growing space, and yet one which has not received widespread attention within Western scholarship - especially in the field of education. For example, Zhu and Xiao (2021) explore feminisms with Chinese characteristics, pointing to the plurality of Chinese feminisms that reflect and disrupt traditional and contemporary gender(ed) cultures and politics in China. Yin and Sun (2021) and Chang and Tian (2021) present the manifestations of digital feminism in Chinese online media platforms. In addition, Choi et al (2020) and Lai (2021) write about how feminism and gender equality are increasingly influenced by the prevailing political landscape and socio-cultural challenges within Chinese national contexts. How Chinese feminism (and gender issues) manifest in and impacts on educational contexts remains under-explored. 

Whilst Gender and Education has a long history of publishing the work from Chinese contexts, including diasporic contexts, the journal has yet to make these a focus. Growing out of a 2-day event run by the journal Editors at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in December 2024, this Special Issue intends to redress this balance. Therefore, we invite scholars working in gender, sexuality and education research within Chinese contexts to submit to this Special Issue.

The Special Issue has a deliberately broad remit, as the guest Editors are keen to publish a wide range of relevant research. What must be apparent is an engagement with feminist theories and with how these theories help to advance knowledge in the contextual field. We are particularly keen to publish research that engages with Chinese feminist theories and uses these to challenge dominant Western feminist thought and its application to gender, sexuality and education research within Chinese contexts. Themes we are particularly interested in are:

●      Localised theoretical interventions, including theorising beyond essential differences, gender pluralities and thinking with how gender can be contextualised within different Chinese contexts

●      Methodological advancements, including research as community work and feminist narratives

●      Critical engagements with the notion of a ‘Chinese context’

●      Researcher subjectivities within Chinese contexts

●      Global trends and local contexts, including neoliberalism and diversifying the voices writing in this space

●      De-coloniality, gender and education

●      Gendered schooling experiences

●      Sexuality education

●      Women, gender-diverse and queer academic life

●      Lived educational experiences, including policy impacts on lived experiences

●      Tactical resistance and activism, including alternative ways to resist dominant narratives, and grassroots feminist communities

●      Thinking with gender, sexuality and education

●      Trans* lives, education and Chinese contexts

●      Sexualities, hetero/cisnormativity and educational contexts

●      Intersectionality, gender and education

●      Masculinities, gender and education

●      Digital technologies, gender, sexuality and education

cation.

About the Special Issue Editor Team

Dr Catherine Atkinson-Ross, The University of Manchester, UK: Catherine Atkinson-Ross is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Education, with a background in Sociology and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching are concerned with issues of in/equality and social justice in education, with a particular focus on queer identities. She is currently researching and writing in two distinct areas: heteronormativity and transphobia in UK education, and LGBT teachers’ experiences in China. Catherine is the Gender and Sexuality Equality Lead for the University of Manchester’s School of Environment, Education and Development, recently co-leading the School’s successful application for Athena Swan Silver.

Associate Professor William Feng, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China: William Feng works at the Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he serves as Associate Director of Research Centre for Professional Communication in English. As a discourse analyst specialized in multimodal communication and media, William’s work on gender and femininity in the Chinese context focuses on two themes: (1) the media representation and emotional vulnerability of female university teachers and students, as well as their self-representation on social media; (2) Chinese micro-celebrities’ identity performance on various media platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. He adopts a discursive view of identity and combines multimodal discourse analysis and (digital) ethnography to unveil the complexity of femininity in contemporary China. His relevant work has appeared in journals such as Gender and Education; Feminist Discourse Studies; Discourse; Context; Media; and TESOL Quarterly.

Associate Professor Emily Gray, Monash University, Australia: Emily Gray works at the School of Education, Culture and Society at Monash University’s Faculty of Education. As a feminist scholar of gender, sexuality and education, Emily has 2 interconnected programmes of work: inequalities for LGBTIQ+ educators in schools and higher education, and everyday sexisms in higher education. Emily's work as an academic is driven by a feminist ethic of care that seeks to make a generous, generative and impactful contribution to research and to engage the wider public in innovative and participatory ways. Her methodological expertise is internationally recognised, and she worked between 2019-2024 as a guest lecturer at The Education University Hong Kong, teaching educational research methods and supervising over 50 Master’s students.  Emily is co-Editor of Gender and Education and a co-Chair of the Gender and Education Association.

Professor Wang Xiying, Beijing Normal University, China:  Wang Xiying is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University, and 2019-2020 Harvard- Yenching Scholar. Her research interests include: gender-based violence, sex education, school bullying, women living with HIV/AIDS, education of sociology, Youth Studies, Gender Studies, and Qualitative Research Methods.  She has written and published around 100 research papers, including journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, working papers and reports.  Her articles have been published widely in international peer–reviewed journals, including Modern China; Violence Against Women; the Journal of Interpersonal Violence; the British Journal of Sociology of Education; and the Journal of School Violence, and gained a lot of attention, both locally and internationally. Her book, Gender, Dating and Violence in Urban China, was published by Routledge in 2017. She has been the principal investigator of different projects funded by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs, UNFPA China office, and the UN Women China Office.

Dr. Gina Chin-Yi Yang, Hong Kong University & Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR, China: Gina is currently a part-time lecturer at The University of Hong

Kong and Lingnan University. Her research focuses on gender and youth studies

within the unique socio-cultural landscapes of Kinmen, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Employing a feminist perspective, her research investigates how patriarchal clan

structures and Kinmen’s military history shape youth’s education, work, and

migration choices. Examining the interplay of globalization, state power, and local

contexts, her research contends that rapid economic, social, and demographic

changes have not inherently resulted in greater gender equality. Chin-Yi has

published in journals including the Journal of Youth Studies; Population; Space and

Place; and Cultural Studies. Her book chapter “Borderland Emotions: A Case Study

of Youths in Kinmen, Taiwan” highlights the divergence of the meaning of “home”

and imagined futures along gender and sexuality lines. Recently, she co-authored

The History of Nam Chung: Forgotten Stories of Hong Kong and has delved into the

intersection between women’s collectives, co-living practices, and Hong Kong

history.

Associate Professor Yuwei Xu, University of Nottingham, UK: Dr Yuwei Xu is Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education at the University of

Nottingham, UK. Previously he has held academic positions at University College

London (UCL) and the University of Portsmouth. With a PhD in gender and early

childhood studies gained from the University of Glasgow, UK, Yuwei’s research focuses

on the (re)production of gender norms and heteronormativity in educational contexts.

His work employs comparative and intercultural approaches, with a particular

attention to decolonizing gender theories in the Global South. Yuwei has recently co-

edited a book published by Routledge, entitled Gendered and Sexual Norms in

Global South Early Childhood Education: Understanding Normative Discourses in

Post-Colonial Contexts. He is co-Editor-in-Chief for three international journals: the British Educational Research Journal; Children and Society; and Pedagogy,

Culture and Society.