PERSONAL VOICES Chinese Women in the 1980s<i> by Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter (Stanford University Press: $12.95) </i>

The lives of Chinese women are changing more rapidly than at any time since the early 1950s, when they joined the work force in unprecedented numbers as part of the Communist Party’s “Great Leap Forward.” The changes have brought with them myriad problems, which the authors, both history professors, compellingly chronicle by excerpting and interpreting articles from the local press. The advice columns read like Dear Abby for beginners (“Helping a woman pick up something she has dropped, and saying something appropriate, will often provide an opening for you to become acquainted”) and to Western eyes, many of the essays will seem sexist (“Men are bold, women are meek,” writes Lin Ling, a female author, “men are majestic, women are refined”). But many of the social trends followed here are not dissimilar to those in America. Articles on fashion and sexuality are now sprinkled through women’s magazines, feminism is finding a voice in literary journals and divorce--as well as extra-marital cohabitation--is on the rise.