Responses

Abstract

In reviewing current approaches to Chinese women, gender, and sexuality Jankowiak criticizes what he sees to be certain conceptual and methodological biases, starting points, and their logical consequences. In particular he makes the following claims: first, that women's and gender studies have focused on women at the expense of both men and relations between men and women; second, that as a causal variable and unit of analysis gender has been privileged not only over class but also over the complexity of factors that affect human behavior, and third, that the starting-point for such studies is a conflictual model rooted crucially in notions of dominance and inequality. Here we explore critically these claims, uncovering their limitations and implicit biases as well as their political implications.