Life and Leisure

This study base is just for the girls

By Mei Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-13 13:05

Writers and critics might well be engaged in heated debates on sensitive women's topics, but it hasn't stopped them from getting together to set up the nation's first research base for the study of female culture.

Launched last month in Beijing, the research base is run by China Research Center on Women's Culture under Capital Normal University, which has been exploring the living condition of women over the past decade with an emphasis on balance between male and female power relations.

"We hope the base will provide a platform for exchanges on studying female culture, integration of academic resources, and giving impetus to the liberation of both sexes," says university head Zhang Xue.

Director of the research center, Wang Hongqi, a veteran scholar on women's culture and literature studies, says the base will strive to establish a new set of theories based on Chinese culture, to replace theories introduced from the West in the 1980s.

 

"The focus will not be on the confrontation of the two sexes," Wang says. "We hope to bring mutual development."

Zhang Kangkang, vice-president of China Writers' Association, and Zhao Jinfang, president of Beijing Women's Federation, are honorary directors of the base.

The base will undertake the publication of China Women Culture, an academic periodical, and host monthly forums on women studies, such as literature.