The hidden half: the double lives of Chinese migrant women in post-war Britain

Drawing on oral histories of first-generation migrant women, this paper explores Chinese women’s role in financing migrant households, mothering children and promoting the well-being of the British Chinese community after 1945. It argues that, with better educational attainment and wider participation in professional occupations Chinese migrant women played an increasingly essential yet unrecognised role in private and public lives. This paper expands knowledge of Chinese women’s experiences in contemporary international migration and confirms the necessity of understanding migration through the lens of gender to reveal evolving gendered family roles within migrant households and migrant women’s manifold but unrecognised merits.