Women Suffragists and the National Politics in Early Republican China, 1911-1915.

The Chinese suffragists in the early 1910s attempted to inject gender into early Republican politics. They employed a new rhetoric of citizens' civil rights and new institutional practices to do so. Suffragists acquired power and authority in the public sphere, questioned the authority of the National Assembly and Legislature, and interfered with the merger of the Nationalist party. They defined the nature of the Republic and defended women's place in it by challenging the political dominance of men. The suffrage movement shaped the modern politics of nation building, democracy and subjectivity in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]