Between subordination and she-tiger: Social constructions of white femininity in the lives of single, Protestant missionaries in China, 1905–1930

In this paper I focus on the social constructions of gender in the lives of single Protestant missionary women, exploring how they were able to expand notions of White femininity by utilising both ideologies of devotional domesticity and the personal support and professional validation of women-identified communities. I suggest that these freedoms were directly related to certain framings of indigenous Chinese men and women — specifically, the emasculated Chinese male who was seen as little threat to Western women's safety, and the victimised Chinese woman who required advocacy and rescue. To illustrate these issues, I use the writings of two White Methodist missionary women from the United States and England who served in China between 1905 and 1930, suggesting that such stretching of the parameters of femininity questioned the particularly androcentric nature of Western imperialist authority at the same time that it perpetuated the racial dynamic of a colonial social order.