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BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

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<strong>BUILDING</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>NATION</strong> <strong>THROUGH</strong> WOMEN’S <strong>HEALTH</strong>:<br />

<strong>MODERN</strong> MIDWIFERY IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINA<br />

Tina Phillips, PhD<br />

University of Pittsburgh, 2006<br />

China’s nation-building agenda in the early twentieth century embraced the causes of<br />

women’s rights and medical modernization. Modernizers considered the poor health of the<br />

Chinese population to be a major impediment to progress. Specifically, modern midwifery<br />

would improve the health of the nation at its most fundamental level, both by lowering the high<br />

infant mortality rate and by securing the well-being of future generations. Amid growing interest<br />

in maternal and child health, women entered the Western medical profession as midwives,<br />

nurses, and obstetrician/gynecologists. Local and national governments in China supported<br />

midwife training and research for the health of future generations. China’s central government<br />

established a National Midwifery Board in 1929 to create and oversee training programs and<br />

enact laws to regulate modern midwives and physicians. Medical professionals and associations<br />

had enough political clout to transform public health policy. They successfully lobbied for<br />

legislation and actively advocated adopting aspects of Western medicine for women.<br />

Midwives engendered better and stronger generations by using new methods and<br />

equipment. Furthermore, midwife training allowed Chinese women to participate in<br />

modernization by joining the labor force, thus challenging traditional Chinese notions of female<br />

passivity and seclusion. At the same time, however, these modern midwives displaced the<br />

traditional old-style “birth grannies” who had served as social and ritual mediators within the<br />

iv

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