From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the experiences of predominantly male Chinese migrants in Canada, their relationship with each other, and their interactions with Chinese and Canadian society were influenced by each society's patriarchal nature. Each society had a culturally-specific patriarchal system that perpetuated the interests of a few elite men over other groups and cultures, and each portrayed this group as the masculine ideal. Since each viewed events through this lens, racism frequently took on a gendered language. The construction of culturally-specific notions of gender helped maintain each community's culturally-specific patriarchal system. Furthermore, racialized gender constructs and gendered constructs of race legitimized existing patterns of domination both within each group and in these groups' interactions with each other. This thesis shows that the categories of race and gender were linked and that a feminist approach is useful for the study of immigration history.

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