'A position of usefulness': Gendering history of girls' education in colonial Hong Kong (1850s-1890s)

'A position of usefulness': Gendering history of girls' education in colonial Hong Kong (1850s-1890s)

• Chiu, Patricia Pok Kwan Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

History of Education, 37(6), 789-805, 2008

Routledge

2008

• P Social Context of Education
  • PA History of Hong Kong Education
    • PAA History of Hong Kong Education (Before 1945)
• P Social Context of Education
  • PI Education of Girls & Women, Gender Roles; Gender; Femininities; Masculinities; Sexualities

Females Foreign Countries Sexual Identity Womens Education Foreign Policy Educational History Religious Education Christianity Race Social Class Educational Policy Educational Practices Sex Role Residential Care Hong Kong

• Hong Kong

• before 1841

• Unknown or Unspecified

Girls' education has been considered a site of struggle where ideals of femininity and domesticity are translated into curricula and practices that seek to shape and regulate. In colonial Hong Kong, British mission societies had a significant share in providing girls' education, which was predominantly in the hands of European missionaries in the nineteenth century. The dual mission of evangelising and civilising colonial subjects in the Victorian era of empire expansion constituted a pertinent focus of inquiry in the writing of history of girls' education. Drawing on selected texts on missionary literature and government reports, this article examines in what ways a domestic ideology framed within evangelical beliefs and the imperial gaze interplayed with the politics of race and class in shaping girls' education. It challenges the presumed impartiality in education policies and practices concerning both sexes, and discusses women's agency in re-defining identities and boundaries in a colonial society.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600802368715]

• English

Journal Articles

• 0046760X

• 10.1080/00467600802368715

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/c2203dfe

2010-09-06