Abstract: In the pervasive call for women's rights in China after the May Fourth Movement, The Ladies' Journal, once advocated the aim to cultivate “new mode of good wife and mother”, incurred poignant criticism from the public. As a response, the Commercial Press had to renominate the editor of the magazine. In October 1921, ZHOU Jianren took the position of assisting editor, working together with chief-editor ZHANG Xichen redesigned the publishing aims, reformed the forms of written Chinese, and readjusted the columns, expended the sources of articles, and published a series of special issues. Hence, The Ladies' Journal became one of the main fields for new femininity discourse after the May Fourth Movement. With the pen names Keshi, Gaoshan, Qiaofeng etc., ZHOU Jianren published more than one hundred of articles and focused his discussions on independent personhood of women, marital freedom, job seeking, and new sexual ethics. He was one of the leading experts on femininity research and led the trends of femininity discussion. Because of his vernacular Chinese expression, sensitive perspective tracing the social ethos, and discussion on social hotspots, ZHOU Jianren contributed to the expending of target audiences and increased the social impact of the magazine.

Key words: The Ladies' Journal, ZHOU Jianren, new femininity discourse