Women's emancipation started with 1911

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, known for her biting criticism of gender discrimination, describes how a woman like her was denied entry into a university library without the supervision of a man. This shows that women in the West had to fight for their rights and fend off "the second sex" label even in the 20th century.

The feminist movements in the West have gone through two major waves. The first started in the late 19th century through the early 20th century and demanded that women be given suffrage, access to education and right to work. The second wave began in the 1970s, with women demanding greater gender equality.

Compared with Western feminist movements, which were independent of and progressed along with social revolutions, feminist movements in China have been part of the country's social revolution. Women's emancipation during the 1911 Revolution provides a good example of this.