Abstract: The compilation of women's textbooks of the late Qing Dynasty and Republican China saw its peak from 1904 to 1915, but it lacked in numbers and kinds with incomplete subjects. Textbooks for girls in primary schools were mainly complied in the late Qing Dynasty and republican China，including morality, Chinese, calligraphy, housewifery, arithmetic as major subjects. Textbooks for girls in middle schools were mainly complied in the early Republican China，including arithmetic , algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics, physiology, mineralogy, zoology, botany as major subjects. Enlightenment aspirations in Women’s textbooks shows that women were empowered the rights to receive education, seek self- development, get employed and keep health mentally and physically and extends beyond what advanced intellectuals thought about women and women's education. For compiled by males, women’s textbook presents the ideal image of women in line with social and cultural standards of a male’s world which concerns women's social function in the new era and a docile training of a "good wife and a good mother". Although rights are empowered rather than self-empowering, women’s textbooks has been of massive historical significance and value based on that they advocate a new paradigm for life and stresses a different identity with a "national mother" and "female national " from the perspective of natural rights of women, which has illuminated the dark times of Chinese society.

Key words: the Late Qing and Republican China, women, textbooks, empowerment, enlightenment