Li Xiaojiang

Li Xiaojiang was a Chinese scholar of women's studies who was arguably the first to bring Women's Studies to importance in post-Mao China. One of China's leading feminist thinkers and writers, she was a professor at several colleges, as well as director of gender studies at Dalian University. As a young student, she started off at the Henan University studying Western Literature, until an encounter showed her how lacking women's studies scholarship was and caused her to change her major from Western Literature to Women's Studies. In 1983 her work Xiawa de Tansuo was the catalyst for a surge of women's studies. She founded the first Women's Studies Research Centre and later a museum dedicated to women's cultural anthropology.