Xiaolan Bao (1949 – January 22, 2006) was a Burmese-American historian, educator, and researcher.
Bao was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1949. A professor of history at California State University Long Beach during the period 1993 to 1996, she was also the founder of the US-based international organization, Chinese Society for Women's Studies. Her 2006 book, Holding Up More Than Half the Sky, Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948-92, is considered to be a pioneering study. Bao died of breast cancer in 2006. A scholarship for the school is named in her honor.
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 (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. 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. 