• DOI:10.1017/S0305741000013515
• Corpus ID: 154871316

The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns

@article{Lavely1990TheRI,
  title={The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns},
  author={William R. Lavely and Xiao Zhenyu and Liu Bohua and Ronald Freedman},
  journal={The China Quarterly},
  year={1990},
  volume={121},
  pages={61 - 93}
}

• W. Lavely, Xiao Zhenyu, +1 author R. Freedman
• Published 1 March 1990
• Education
• The China Quarterly

The considerable increase in educational attainment of Chinese women from virtual complete illiteracy 50 years ago to current levels can be traced systematically for the first time on the basis of the 1982 census of China and a large sample survey of the same year. Until very recently we had known only the broad outlines of this major social transformation. Although even the newly available data are imperfect, their significance is illustrated by their strong and consistent association with such vital facts of life as the age at which women marry and the number of children they bear. Educational levels can be shown to have varied with degree of urbanization and rural development from the earliest days of the People's Republic. Major regions of China have distinctive educational histories. In all regions examined here, however, the course of educational change was affected to a greater or lesser degree by such major historical events as the great famine, the Cultural Revolution and the post-Mao reforms. It is now possible to measure with some precision the influence of these events on educational progress. This paper utilizes census and survey data to describe change in female education nationally and for four major regional populations from 1952 to 1982. Because it is plausible that the educational trends and differentials are related to other aspects of Chinese social, political and economic history, they are presented here in some detail. Our findings can be summarized as follows: 1. The rise of female education occurred mainly in two periods the 1950s to 1958, and the late 1960s to mid 1970s.