The Communist revolution promised Chinese women an end to thousands of years of subjugation, an equality with men in all matters legal, political, social, and economic. This book examines the extent to which this promise has been kept. Based on nearly a year of field research and interviews with over 300 women in six widely separated rural and urban areas, it gives us a vivid picture of Chinese women today - their day-to-day lives, their views of the present, and their hopes for the future. To date nothing approximating equality has been in working conditions, in pay, in educational opportunity. In the cities, and to a lesser extent in the countryside, women are better off than in pre-revolutionary China. But nowhere except in the rhetoric of the regime are they equal to men. Nor does the immediate future look much brighter, given the continuing social constraints, the government's controversial family limitation program, and the nature of the new economic policies introduced in 1980. So far as possible, the women interviewed are allowed to speak for themselves. Some take refuge behind government slogans, some are shy or wary, but a surprising number are quick to give their own opinions despite an ever-present government cadre. These opinions, combined with the author's astute observations on their local and national context, add up to a wholly new perspective on an all too familiar problem.

Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China

Margery Wolf

Methuen young books

The scholarly essays offer study-assessments of the changing roles, status, and lives of Chinese women, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, on the Mainland and Taiwan, in the twentieth century

Women in Chinese Society

Roxane Witke

Stanford University Press

Margery Wolf was a professor of anthropology and women’s studies as well as chair of women’s studies at the University of Iowa from 1985 to 2001. Prior to that she was a visiting faculty member at Duke University. She attended Santa Rosa Junior College and San Francisco State University, focusing on fiction writing. After marriage she worked as a research assistant for social scientists involved in the Six Cultures Project. She and husband Arthur Wolf conducted extensive ethnographic field research in Taiwan and in the People’s Republic of China.
Margery based The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Farm Family on her research in Taiwan, launching her career as a feminist cultural anthropologist. She followed it with Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan and Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China. Another scholarly book, A Thrice Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility, followed her marriage to anthropologist Mac Marshall. She also wrote the novels The Orchards and What the Water Buffalo Wrought. The retiree lived in Santa Rosa until her death in April 2017.
Trouble at the U 
It’s one of the coldest winters on record in Iowa City, Iowa, with snow still on the ground. The dean of one of the colleges is missing after Thanksgiving break, but even worse, two vans full of returning students are involved in a fiery crash. Soon the media and parents are frantically calling the university. President Barlow and his trusted administrative assistant Mary Lou stand united in their duty, but it’s not too long before things get even more complicated.
The dean’s murdered body is found, state police worry that drug cartels are behind the crash, and someone has warned Mary Lou about becoming involved. The body count continues to rise, as does the number of connections between the university and drugs. It will take a cooperative effort of law enforcement, both the two-legged and four-legged kind, as well as a resourceful secretary and her family to unravel the mystery.
Drawing on the sixteen years she spent as a faculty member at the University of Iowa, Margery Wolf has crafted a tale that leads readers down a path of intrigue and suspense. Trouble at the U weaves in details of the world of a large university from academic politics to relationships between a small town and professors. The mystery reflects Margery’s ethnographer’s eye in portraying different kinds of people and what makes them unique as Hawkeye state residents.

Trouble at the U

Literature & Fiction

Dog Ear Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Margery Wolf. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Margery Wolf

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Margery Wolf. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China

Women in Chinese Society

Trouble at the U