Xiaolan Bao (1949 – January 22, 2006) was aBurmese American historian, educator, and researcher. She was the author of the 2001 book,Holding Up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, which is regarded as a breakthrough work ofAsian Americanlabor history. Her academic field was Chinese and Chinese American women's history and labor history.

Bao was born and raised inRangoon, Burma.^[1] In 1975 she completed her B.A. atBeijing Teachers College, followed by an M.A. fromJinan University in 1981. In 1984 she continued her studies atNew York University, where she earned a Ph.D. in History in 1991.^[2] She continued her research on New York-based Chinese women garment workers after she completed her doctoral work.^[1] Bao spokeBurmese, English,Mandarin,Taishanese, and several other dialects of Cantonese.^[1]

Bao's first teaching position was atAlbion College from 1991 to 1993.^[2] Next, she was a professor of history atCalifornia State University Long Beach during the period 1993 to 1996. Her 2001 book,Holding Up More Than Half the Sky, Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948–92, is noted as an important and breakthrough work by many scholars in her field, particularly because it focused on labor history of Asian Americans.^[3][1][4][5]

Bao was also the founder of the US-based international organization,Chinese Society for Women's Studies (CSWS). She and Wu Xu were organizers of several collaborations between the CSWS and various Chinese institutions, and were funded by theFord Foundation. These included the 1993First Chinese Women and Development Conference co-sponsored with the Center for Women’s Studies at Tianjin Normal University, which focused on the concept of gender and led to the publishing of a number of works, including Bao'sXifang nüxing zhuyi pingjie (On Western Feminist Research),^[6] which was influential in feminist circles in China.^[7] In 1997, in Nanjing, participants in theSecond Chinese Women and Development Conference sought to identify and integrate appropriate contemporary Western feminist thought into Chinese scholarship. Finally, in 1998, Bao and Xu collaborated with the Sichuan Women’s Federation Women’s Studies Institute to bring together gender studies scholars and development specialists knowledgeable about China at theGender, Poverty and Rural Development Participatory Workshop in Chengdu.^[6]

Bao died ofbreast cancer in 2006.^[8][9] TheXiaolan Bao Memorial Scholarship, honoring research on Asian or Asian American women, is named in her honor.^[10]

• Bao, Xiaolan (1994). "When Women Arrived: The Transformation of New York's Chinatown".Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press.ISBN 9781566391702.
• Bao, Xiaolan, ed. (1995). Xifang niixingzhuyi yanjiu pingjie [An introduction to Western feminist scholarship]. Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore.
• Bao, Xiaolan (2001).Holding Up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948–92. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.ISBN 9780252026317.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Bao, Xiaolan (2003). "Sweatshops in Sunset Park: A Variation of the Late-Twentieth-Century Chinese Garment Shops in New York City".Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historical and Global Perspective. New York: Routledge.ISBN 9780415935609.
• Bao, Xiaolan (2003). "Revisiting New York's Chinatown, 1900–1930".Remapping Asian American History. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press.ISBN 9780759104792.
• Bao, Xiaolan (2003). "Politicizing Motherhood: Chinese Garment Workers' Campaign For Daycare Centers in New York City, 1977–1982".Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. New York: New York University Press.ISBN 9780814736326.
• Bao, Xiaolan (2005).How Did Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City Forge a Successful Class-Based Coalition During the 1982 Contract Dispute? (Document). Binghamton, New York: State University of New York.OCLC 469854165.

• 1949 births
• 2006 deaths
• 20th-century American historians
• California State University, Long Beach faculty
• People from Yangon
• Burmese emigrants to the United States
• Burmese people of Chinese descent
• American writers of Chinese descent
• 20th-century American women writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• 20th-century Burmese women writers
• 21st-century Burmese women writers
• 20th-century Burmese writers
• 21st-century Burmese writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• American women historians
• Burmese emigrants to China

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• Articles with short description
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• CS1 maint: publisher location