Zhang Hanying

Zhang Hanying (; 1872–1915) was a significant activist in China's women's movement in the early Republican period. Born to a prominent family, she was able to access an education, and she promoted women's suffrage in China, working with the Seventh Conference of All Nation's Women's Suffrage in 1913 and the Women's Suffrage Alliance.

Early life Zhang Hanying was born in 1872 to a prestigious Hunanese family who were natives of Liling at the Lu River. She and her father had a close relationship, and he encouraged her to advance her intellectual pursuits and seek an education that was rare for girls at that time.

Scholars write that Zhang was a precocious child who often questioned unfamiliar ideas, made strong arguments, and had an "unyielding personality". This school fostered the minds of young radicals of all genders and backgrounds. The school curriculum developed the students' confidence in how they could congregate and express themselves.

Zhang Hanying was one of the first students to participate in this new age of overseas education for Chinese women in Japan. In the late 1800s to early 1900s, there was a strong trend of Japanese schools accepting overseas students. Due to this influx, a male overseas student named Fan Yuanlian convinced Utako Shimoda, the founder of the Practical Women's School, to accept twenty Hunanese Chinese female overseas students to conform with other Japanese schools.

Women's Suffrage Alliance During the 1911 Revolution in China, many women struggled to get their message of equal rights to the masses. Zhang Hanying along with Tang Qunying and Wang Changguo, formed the Shenzhou Canzheng Tongmenghui (Shenzhou Women's Suffrage Alliance) in 1912, which was formerly known as The Women's Northern Expedition Teams and founded in 1911.

Zhang Hanying, Tang Qunying, and Wang Changguo shifted from their Women's Northern Expedition Team into a new group called Shenzhou Women's Suffrage Alliance on February 12, 1912, in Nanjing. Their goals were to promote equal political rights for men and women, equality in marriage and the family, and women's education, and to prohibit concubines. The group initially had more than two hundred followers; many were from the old Revolutionary Alliance with some experience in suffrage. They had branches of the group in other provinces outside of their headquarters in Nanjing.

Within this Alliance, she along with a committee heard from Chinese women about the abusive behavior they faced from their husbands. Then, acting as female judges, they would give rulings to ease these women's minds. This, along with other actions, aimed to not only assist women in distress but to bring domestic abuse into the spotlight.

On February 27, 1912, women representatives Zhang Hanying, Cai Hui , Ge Wenyuan, Chen Biyin, Tang Qunying, Zhang Mojun, Wang Changguo, Zhang Jiarong, Tong Wenxu, Xu Qing, Cheng Ying, Zhou Yingshui, Wu Zhiying, Yue Yu, Qiu Guixian, Zhang Qunying, Zhou Wenjie, Shi Ruixian, Chen Hongbi , and Shen Peizhen submitted a letter to the Assembly to add a law that men and women were equal and that women should have the right to vote in the provisional constitution. They argued that after a political revolution, they must guarantee societal equality to avoid a social revolution. They believed that an equal society required women's equal rights and suffrage at its foundation. In the same letter, they rejected that women were not qualified enough to vote and turned that argument around, voicing what makes men qualified for suffrage. This letter emphasized that they sought women's suffrage in China through legal routes, instead of through violent protest.

Death Zhang died in 1915 in unknown circumstances.