Key Memories

Researchers in women's and gender history must maintain strong concern for current realities, which represents the social responsibility of intellectuals. While engaged in university teaching and research work, I strive to focus on contemporary social issues, particularly women's issues. As a research field, women's and gender history studies should strengthen international academic exchanges, as advancing gender equality requires joint efforts from all regions worldwide and all sectors of society. We must value history's instructive role and build bridges between academic research and public scholarship.

■ Interviewee: Professor Yi Zhaoyin, Shanghai Normal University ■ Interviewer and Editor: Cai Shuangxi

The year 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing Women's Conference) and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. At this critical juncture for promoting gender equality and women's empowerment globally, reflecting on my journey with my team in conducting women's and gender history research, promoting research outcomes, and building academic exchange platforms fills me with deep emotion!

Making Women's Studies a Lifelong Commitment

In traditional historiography, men occupied center stage in historical narratives, while women were the "voiceless" in historical accounts. Driven by contemporary historical innovation and the women's movement, women's history research emerged in the West and China successively from the 1960s to 1980s. From 1992-1994, during my visiting scholarship at the University of Maryland, I encountered cutting-edge women's history, social and cultural history research, and gender theory, taking related courses. In September 1995, when the Beijing Women's Conference convened, I enrolled in the History Department at Fudan University to pursue my doctoral degree while working. Learning that China, as the host country, had established gender equality as a fundamental national policy, I was extremely excited and determined to make women's studies my lifelong pursuit. Combining my professional training, my doctoral dissertation examined the status of ancient Greek women from cultural and gender perspectives, published in 2001 by Commercial Press under the title "Women in Ancient Greece: Research from a Cultural Perspective." As the first domestic monograph researching ancient Greek women's issues, this book possessed academic pioneering significance. The year after publication, it won the second prize for outstanding achievements in Shanghai's philosophy and social sciences, and in 2004, it received the second prize for monographs in the first China Women's Research Outstanding Achievement Awards. Subsequently, Western women's history research gradually became my major research field.

In 2002, my National Social Science Fund project "Historical Changes in Western Women's Status" was approved. After seven years of dedicated research and effort, the 700,000-word "History of Western Women," co-authored with over ten domestic scholars under my leadership, was officially published by Commercial Press. This book was the first domestic academic work systematically studying Western women's history. In 2013, it won the third prize for works in the Sixth Outstanding Achievement Awards for Higher Education Institutions (Humanities and Social Sciences) by the Ministry of Education.

As my research in Western women's history and social and cultural history deepened, I published a series of high-quality academic achievements, including seven authored and translated works and over sixty papers. In 2012, I collaborated with Hong Qingming, Kang Kai, and Zhang Kai to translate "World Women's History," which won the second prize for translations in the Third China Women's Research Outstanding Achievement Awards. Over twenty papers I wrote on women's and gender history research were published in authoritative and core journals such as "Historical Research," "World History," and "Academic Monthly." Among these, "Review and Prospects of Chinese and Western Women's History Research" and "The Rise of Women's History Research and Contemporary Historiography" were reprinted by "Xinhua Digest."

Bearing Social Responsibility and Building Exchange Platforms

In my view, researchers in women's and gender history must maintain strong concern for current realities, which represents the social responsibility of intellectuals. While engaged in university teaching and academic research, I strive to focus on contemporary social issues, particularly women's issues. I actively participate in activities of the International Social Science Council's "Gender, Globalization and Democracy" research group, the All-China Women's Federation, Shanghai Women's Studies Association, and Shanghai Normal University's Women's Research Center, working to mainstream gender awareness into decision-making. As Executive Deputy Director of Shanghai Normal University's Women's Research Center and Director of Shanghai Women's Studies Association, I led center research teams to complete studies on "Research on the Status of Female Intellectuals in Shanghai Universities," "Public Policy Assessment Research from a Gender Perspective," and "Urban Culture and Women's Development," publishing "Social Transformation and Urban Intellectual Women" in 2005. This book won the second prize for research reports in the Second China Women's Research Outstanding Achievement Awards in 2010.

I led my team in promoting women's studies, particularly women's history research outcomes, striving to build international and national academic exchange platforms. In 2002, Shanghai Normal University's Women's Research Center, Japan's China Women's History Research Association, and Shanghai Women's Studies Association held an international symposium on women's history. In 2010 and 2013, Shanghai Normal University's World History discipline and Women's Research Center successively convened international academic symposiums on "Theory and Practice of Women's History Research" and "World Women's History Research from New Perspectives," exploring various women's history issues from a gender perspective. In 2015, on the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Women's Conference, we held a founding consultation meeting for "Women's and Gender History Research." In 2016, this journal was officially launched. "Women's and Gender History Research," with Yi Zhaoyin as editor-in-chief and Hong Qingming as deputy editor-in-chief, publishes annually through Shanghai Joint Publishing Company and has now published nine volumes. The People's University "Reprinted Periodical Materials" lists this journal among its source materials, reprinting multiple papers from it. Since 2016, Shanghai Normal University's World History discipline, the university's Women's Research Center, and the "Women's and Gender History Research" editorial board have annually hosted international or national academic symposiums on women's and gender history research. In recent years, Shanghai Women and Children Development Research Center has also become one of the conference organizers. "Women's and Gender History Research" and academic symposiums themed on women's and gender history research have attracted numerous domestic and international scholars and young researchers to participate in discussions, becoming an important academic platform for exchange and dialogue among China's women's and gender history researchers.

Strengthening International Exchange and Emphasizing Academic Outreach

As a research field, women's and gender history studies should strengthen international academic exchanges. Women's empowerment and gender equality advancement require joint efforts from all global regions, both sexes, and all sectors of society. We must value history's instructive role and build bridges between academic research and public scholarship.

I highly value Sino-foreign academic and cultural exchanges and the socialization of historical knowledge. In 2001, I was invited by the Swiss National Women's League to investigate their education and gender equality implementation. In 2010, I delivered an academic report at the Fourth General Assembly of the Third World Organization for Women in Science in Beijing. In 2011, I was invited to give an academic presentation on China's women's liberation movement at Illinois State University. In 2014, I was invited to teach about "Confucian gender concepts and women's living conditions in the Han Dynasty" in the BBC historical documentary "The Rise of Women," receiving attention and praise. In 2021, I delivered an academic report on gender relationship traditions in ancient China and ancient Greece at the third sub-forum of the First World Congress of Classical Studies in Beijing. As a historical researcher and educator, I deeply feel responsible for sharing cutting-edge academic developments with university faculty and students and serving society with knowledge. In recent years, I have been invited to deliver women's history themed academic lectures to faculty and students at over ten universities including Fudan University, Northeast Normal University, Shanghai University, and Hunan Normal University, and have been invited to give lectures at public cultural platforms such as Shanghai Library, Hunan Provincial Museum, and Liaoning Provincial Museum, popularizing knowledge of women's and gender history and social and cultural history.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the United Nations' founding and the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War. The Global Women's Summit will convene in Beijing. At this critical moment when global governance reaches a new crossroads, using "Beijing+30" as an opportunity to convene the Global Women's Summit will accelerate new processes for women's comprehensive development worldwide and provide new momentum for further deepening women's and gender history research. We will adopt global and China-based perspectives, striving for theoretical and methodological innovation to contribute to building China's independent women's theoretical knowledge system. Academic research should integrate with real life. We must draw from historical experience to contribute wisdom and strength toward building a community with a shared future for mankind and harmonious gender relations between the sexes, using our research and practical actions to promote global and Chinese women's causes and advance the realization of gender equality goals.