Professor Li Xiaojiang, of Zhejiang University, is a pioneer of women’s and gender studies in the PRC. She published Renlei jinbu yu funu jiefang (“Human progress and women’s liberation”) in 1983, one of the first scholarly articles in her field ever published in the PRC. In 1988, Professor Li wrote an essay analyzing the situation of women in the 1980s, arguing that easing the burdens placed on women was key to continued social progress in China.*
“The travesty is that these pressures women endured [before] and continue to endure are never seen as social problems; they are construed as merely individual problems. Criticizing society as unfair is to no avail. The balance of justice has never been the moving force in the progress of history. If one is willing to face reality, then one must see that the emergence of women’s problems is actually a means for society to resolve many other social problems that emerged with reform (such as excess labor, labor productivity, and so on). Women have thus been the cornerstone in the development of society’s productive capacity. Historically it has been so; in reality is is so. No wonder authoritative sociological publications are unwilling to print much