Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. Edited by Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng. [Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001. 310 pp. $19.95; £13.95. ISBN 0-620-22276-8.]

Recent Western research on women and gender in Chinese history has raised critical questions about many of the familiar narratives of China's Confucian tradition. This research – much of it the work of contributors to this volume – has produced perspectives on gender relations that are at once more complex, fluid and historically plausible than the standard assumptions of Confucian discourse would suggest.