Gail Hershatter

Historian of women and gender in 20th-century China, and a leading pioneer in the historical study of post-1949 China more generally. Dangerous Pleasures (1997) was a study of prostitution in 20th-century Shanghai. The Gender of Memory (2012) is by far the best study of how the radical family reforms promoted by the Chinese Communist Party actually played out for women in the countryside. Her other works include an important study of the workers of Tianjin in the first half of the 20th century, and a long, exceptionally helpful, survey of the state of the field of 20th-century Chinese women's and gender history, still a vital reference for anyone interested in that field.