Chinese students, the largest source of international students in Europe, particularly favour the UK as their destination for Higher Education (HE) (Soysa et al., 2018). While Chinese women dominate participation in UK HE (HESA, 2022), in light of intersectionality (Collins, 2019), they may face various challenges, stigmatization, and discrimination based on their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, culture and language throughout their university experience. So, at the intersection between Chinese international students and women students, Chinese women’s lived experience can be different from that of both Chinese men and other women students, although, very little published data has a focus on Chinese women in UK HE. I am, therefore, interested in approaching Chinese women’s lived experience in UK HE from an intersectionality perspective, to engage with literature on HE students’ experiences, particularly those of women students and international students in Europe and globally.

After 1976, China’s dual approach to modernity was based on the neoliberal-socialist regime and ideology as a result of which young adults’ embraced values of neoliberal individualism and parents’ espoused gendered expectations for their daughters. Women’s life experience was characterised by this dual burden and Chinese young women’s construction of modern and traditional womanhood (Liu, 2014). Feminism in China now faces a new structure of power, rekindled traditional discourses, the widespread anti-feminist backlash and the dominance of an institutionalized marriage market. All stress the imperative of research into the understudied subject of Chinese womanhood and the limitations of doing so in the Chinese context. I am interested in exploring whether, and how, Chinese women students’ international HE experiences and transnational mobility can contribute to disrupting and challenging the gender status quo in China.

In light of black feminist thought (Collins, 2014a), it is vital for women, especially those at the margins of society, to define themselves to counter being historically defined by their intersectional marginalization and oppression. Also, in light of internalized oppression (Williams, 2012) and notions of the ideal womanhood (McRobbie, 2015), women students’ understanding of womanhood can have a significant impact on their opportunities and achievement. Considering the widespread influence of post-feminist discourse, the interaction between the understanding of womanhood and women students' life experiences is worth studying. Chinese women students in the UK experience transnational movement and International HE, so they may experience changes in their understanding of womanhood and its interaction with their transnational experience. However, very little is known about whether and how they experience such changes over time.

So, focusing on Chinese women with experience in UK Higher Education, this research aims to explore their understanding of womanhood and its interaction with their lived experience in UK HE over time. It asks specifically:

Q1 How do they understand womanhood over time?

Q1.1 Do they perceive a difference in womanhood between Chinese women and other women in UK HE?

Q2 How does their lived experience in UK HE interact with their understanding of womanhood over time?

Shedding light on UK HE, the findings of this transnational feminist research can engage with the discussion of intersectional justice in Chinese women’s experience in HE in Europe and globally. Also, the findings can contribute to the discussion of Chinese womanhood, gender equity and feminism in China. Together, this research aims to contribute to the discussion of international HE’s role in transnational intersectionality, which is part of the global effort of fighting against interlocking systems of oppression.

This research sits in a critical research paradigm particularly grounded in feminist epistemologies, including feminist standpoint epistemology, such as situated knowledge (Haraway, 2020), double consciousness (hooks, 2000), and outsider-within status (Collins, 2014b), intersectionality (Collins, 2019), and transnational feminisms (Moghadam, 2000).

This qualitative research used life history research and creative methods online. Firstly, 56 Chinese women with experience in UK HE participated in 11 collage-facilitated culturally responsive focus groups online, where they used public domain pictures on shared PowerPoint slides as a whiteboard to make collages together. Sense-making of womanhood can be abstract to discuss and may not be a topic that participants often talk about, so the non-linear and non-linguistic capability of collage can help the elicitation and reconceptualization of womanhood. Culturally responsive focus groups are considered suitable for this research as participants' identities are validated with a focus on gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality and their collective communication styles are appreciated. These collage-facilitated focus groups allowed them to feel comfortable whilst being challenged and supported to go beyond the taken-for-granted understanding of womanhood. This sensitive design assisted participants' collective sense-making of Chinese womanhood and empowered them to validate their truth and how they arrive at it. Secondly, out of 56 focus group participants, 30 participated in timeline-facilitated life history interviews online. Timelines helped complement the research of complicated constructions (Adriansen, 2012; French & Johnson, 2016), in this case, the interplay between the sense-making of Chinese womanhood and their experience in UK HE. With narrative interviews, this visualization allowed me to examine participants’ trajectories of life events, and capture changes, particularly in these cross-cultural settings. Participant recruitment started with convenience sampling, followed by snowball and purposive sampling to recruit more underrepresented groups and to seek diversity. With an average age of 27, around half of the 56 Chinese women were current students and half were alumnae of UK HE, at the time of data collection in 2022. I prioritized and engaged in positionality, reflexivity, and ethics throughout the research process in various ways. Guided by dialectical thinking (Freeman, 2016), I mainly used versus coding (Saldaña, 2016) to code focus group data to reveal dichotomies of power and dramaturgical coding (Saldaña, 2016) to code interviews where I brought people (their emotions, attitudes) back to the dichotomies. For example, I investigated why the dichotomies exist to examine the status quo and changes, and whether and how participants resolve conflicts they felt and to look at potential challenges and disruptions of power dichotomies. Then, I plan to do a second-round coding of all data using longitudinal coding. Intersectionality and domains of power (Collins, 2014a, 2019) is the basis for my data analysis framework.

Data analysis is ongoing, but preliminary findings suggest participants’ sense-making of Chinese womanhood is characterised by a perceived self-contradiction, between traditional women restrained by the moral framework and family-hood, and modern women free to explore and develop individuality and selfhood. Their self-perception of traditional and modern women and lived experiences of patriarchal meritocracy in China are aligned with the country’s socialist-neoliberal regime (Wu & Dong, 2019). Also, as an example of the intersection of age, gender, sexuality and class in China, a social clock is found to be systemically shaping Chinese women’s life paths with perceived deadlines of the right ages of study, work, relationship, heterosexual marriage, and childbirth. Participants considered UK HE and transnational living a chance for individual exploration due to the perceived freedom from moral framework and familyhood. Although, to a lesser extent in the UK, they continued to experience intersectional pressure of ageism, sexism, heteronormativity, and meritocracy from China. Also, their experience of the intersection of racism, xenophobia and sexism in the UK took a specific form associated with their identity as Chinese women and was further exacerbated during COVID-19. They strategically used UK HE to accumulate academic and intercultural capital and to further transnational mobility and agency to make life choices. Many returnees back to China experienced a reverse cultural shock with a perceived lack of gender and sexuality diversity and women’s rights. However, most returnees suggested a long-lasting positive impact of UK HE on their individual autonomy and accredited it to the experience of various lifestyles and learning of critical thinking. Overall, findings suggested intersectionality of gender, age, sexuality, nationality, race, class, language, and culture in Chinese women’s lived experiences and self-perception transnationally, and the significance of UK HE in their life trajectories. These findings have implications for the increasingly internationalized HE in Europe.

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