MISSIONARY WOMEN: GENDER, PROFESSIONALISM AND THE VICTORIAN IDEA OF CHRISTIAN MISSION

"This is the first comprehensive study of the role of gender in British Protestant missionary expansion into China and India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the experiences of wives and daughters, female missionaries, educators and medical staff associated with the London Missionary Society, the China Inland Mission and the various Scottish Presbyterian Mission Societies, this work compares and contrasts gender relations within different British Protestant missions in cross-cultural settings. Drawing on extensive published and archival materials, it examines how gender, race, class, nationality and theology shaped the polity of Protestant missions and Christian interaction with native peoples. Rather than providing a romantic portrayal of fulfilled professional freedom, this study argues that women's labour in Christian missions, as in the secular British Empire and domestic society, remained undervalued in terms of both remuneration and administrative advancement, until well into the twentieth century. Rich in detail and full of insights, this work not only presents the first comparative treatment of gender relations in British Christian missionary movements, but also contributes to an understanding of the importance of gender more broadly in the high imperial age."--BOOK JACKET.