The Raise of Women’s Right in 1918 Shanghai

On May 16, 1918, the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee was founded by seventeen foreign religious and secular charities of the Shanghai International Settlement. Start from 1918, the Municipal Council of the Shanghai International Settlement declared a five-year plan for shutting down all the brothels under its administration, for preventing venereal disease and prostitution prohibition. The establish of the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee declares the raise of women’s rights in early international settlement time.

Prostitution in Shanghai in 1931 (photo from http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-prostitutes-in-shanghai-1931-37011081.html)

At the beginning of the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement, the area was full of lonely male emigrants from Europe and America. In March 1870, the settlement’s alien residents included 1,666 males, with an average age of twenty-eight in average mostly unmarried, and only 218 females. The ratio of men to women was about 8:1. Shanghai’s trading port nature also guaranteed upcoming businessmen and sailors who need prostitution service.

When World War I began, many European and American males returned to their homelands to join in the war. The increasing number of women contributed directly to the movement of moral reform in the Settlement. By 1918, appeals from the women’s societies were becoming even stronger and more frequent. In early February of that year, the Shanghai Women’s Christian Temperance Union began to discuss how to launch a publicity campaign so that the Chinese might be awakened to the issue. After several times failures to approach the Municipal Council for the petition to set up a committee investigating the moral climate in the Settlement, on May 16, 1918, Shanghai Missionary Association, together with seventeen religious and charitable organizations, established the Moral Welfare Committee. Seven out of ten committee members were missionaries.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) (photo from https://sites.google.com/site/orangewomenstemperanceunion/background-on-women-s-christian-temperance-union)

Reference:

Hu, C. (2011). Venereal Disease Prevention, Moral Welfare and Civilized Image: The Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee and the Anti-Prostitution Campaign in the Shanghai International Settlement, 191824. Frontiers of History in China, 6(2), 243-263.