Women

"The small numbers of Chinese women in colonial Australia, and the scattered and fragmentary nature of our sources about them, mean there are particular challenges in uncovering and writing about their lives. To date, these challenges have meant Chinese women have been largely written out of Chinese Australian histories and of broader global histories of nineteenth-century Chinese migration."

Bagnall, K. "Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence", Australian Journal of Biography and History, 2020, (3), 3–20.

Essa

Research difficulties

"The small numbers of Chinese women in colonial Australia, and the scattered and fragmentary nature of our sources about them, mean there are particular challenges in uncovering and writing about their lives. To date, these challenges have meant Chinese women have been largely written out of Chinese Australian histories and of broader global histories of nineteenth-century Chinese migration."

Bagnall, K. “Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence", Australian Journal of Biography and History, 2020, (3), 3–20. 

Location

“Cultivating our knowledge of women in the villages of south China would assist in challenging interpretations of the Chinese diaspora, particularly those current in the white settler nations. The Chinese diaspora, at least in so far as it is considered in the years before the mid-twentieth century, is usu- ally characterised as one principally of men. It is also considered to be one heavily influenced by the immigration restrictions and other discriminations imposed by the white settler nations. Within these nation-state interpretations it is too often forgotten that the majority of these men stayed in close contact with an equally large, if not larger, group of women who remained at home in their south China villages. Consideration of the lives of the Chinese women who remained at home in the villages is crucial if we are to develop an awareness of the dynamics of the Chinese diaspora on individual, family, and community levels."

Michael Williams, Holding Up Half the Family, Journal of Chinese Overseas 17.1, 2021, pp.179-195. 

Demographics

While not completly reliable census data tells us that in 1861 there were 11 Chinese women in the Austrlaian colonies, rising to 44 in 1871, 259 in 1881 and 298 by 1891. However the inclusion of people of mixed race for the first time gives another 642 women. With over 30,000 Chinese men in Australia the proportion of women remained tiny. But as far as most of these men were concerend their women - mothers, wives and daughter - simply lived elsewhere - in the villages of southern China. After Federation the numbers and proportions of both Chinese and part-Chinese women grew as the overall number of Chinese men declined. Thus by 1947 there were nearly 4,000 women of Chinese heritage in Australia.

Source: Table 1.2: Locating Chinese Women, HKU Press, 2021, p.12.

Impact summary

"A female presence in the Chinese settlement experience led to generational renewal of Chinatown’s, and establishment of an Australian born, intergenerational Chinese presence within the Australian community. The politics of the private sphere, highlighted by a female approach to domestic affairs emerged through the application of “soft economics”, which played out from an increase in male status due to the presence of a wife, to the strategic formation of companies via the marriage of Australian born sons and daughters. The presence of women in the community enabled the network of translocal and transnational kinship and family linkages to establish and grow but more importantly, enabled a Chinese presence to take root and prosper in a foreign land. The river of money and ideas, which flowed back to the village in China, from families moving between the two worlds, impacted on those who remained in the ancestral village in ways which are only just beginning to be understood ...."

Sandi Robb, North Queensland's Chinese family landscape: 1860-1920. PhD Thesis, James Cook University. 2019.

Sterotypes

"By the way, although it is said that Irish women are principally favoured by our foreign friends, my observation does not lead me to endorse that opinion. They appear to have treated our nationalities without prejudice. Indeed, if anything, I think the Scotch find most favour in celestial eyes, and I confess I herein admire the celestial shrewdness as well at the celestial taste."

The Australasian, 6 April 1867, p.29.

See also:

Mei-fen Kuo, “Girls doing a big job” in diaspora: cosmopolitan minority and making modern Chinese women associations in white Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2024, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2363520