Women, Sport and Society in China: Holding upMorethan Half the Sky. By Dong Jinxia. [London and Oregon: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003. 357 pp. Hard cover £42.50, ISBN 0-7146-5235-0; paperback £17.50, ISBN 0-7146-8214-4.]

Extract

With Beijing set to host the 2008 Olympic Games, interest in Chinese sports has increased. Due to the greater successes of Chinese sportswomen in the international arena compared to Chinese sportsmen, interest in women's sports has been particularly keen. There are only a few books in English on Chinese sports, and this is the first book focusing on women's sports, and so it will be useful to journalists and instructors n sport studies seeking basic background information. The author performs the valuable service of pulling together nearly 300 Chinese articles and chapters. She reviews all of the available relevant official statistics, but – as is often true of such statistics – it is not always clear what they mean. For example, there is the tantalizing fact that Sichuan's sports system seems to have more gender parity than Guangdong's and Beijing's. This might provide good insight into the differential effects of the inland and coastal economies on women's social status, but this analysis is never fully carried out. The problem of interpreting the statistics is partly corrected by the 48 semi-structured interviews with sportswomen of varied backgrounds, but the content of the interviews is slightly disappointing, as many of the quoted responses seem to repeat the official picture without offering much in the way of deeper insights.