Engendering a Class Revolution

Starting in 1927 Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) industrial secretaries made creating a literate working-class leadership for a female labor movement their primary goal. When the Association's conservative middle-class National Committee refused to approve that goal, they pursued it by establishing night schools for factory women. They taught factory women to read and write while also introducing them to socialist ideas of workers' organization and feminist ideas of women's empowerment. Industrial secretaries carried out a ‘class revolution’ within the Association, breaking down the Association's class barriers by insisting the Chinese YWCA include women of all socio-economic classes. The result was a modicum of success in training leaders for a women's labor movement and, at least in policy, the inclusion o f working women as full-fledged YWCA members

Economic growth · Economics · Empowerment · Middle class · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Working class · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Psychology

• The Ywca of the USA ‘In Service for the Girls of the World’, 1947–1985

  Open Access•Eleanor Tiplady Higgs•Women s Studies International Forum•2024

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