Abstract

As a driving force for change in late modern society, individualisation enables women to enjoy equal opportunities as men in many respects, such as the access to higher education and the labour market. This paper is an introduction of my current PhD project, which attempts to explore the gender equality issue among young generation of Chinese. I will give a critical examination of the feminist methodology I am going to employ in this research, and I hope that later it could be open to more diverse audience for further discussion of this research project. I will start with the background of women’s equal opportunity to access higher education globally. Then I briefly review the social and cultural transformation experienced in contemporary Chinese society and the post-80 generation of Chinese young people. In order to explore the gender role in contemporary China, I will carry out a case study at universities in two urban Chinese cities Beijing and Shanghai. Through the in-depth interviews and participant observation, I will try to obtain educated young women’s perceptions on their gender identities in modern China.