Abstract: Gender theory is an important research framework in the study of rural governance. From the perspective of gender theory, this paper compiles and analyzes the main viewpoints on the reconstruction of rural gender culture, gender cultural differences, women’ s participation in politics, women’ s public participation, women’ s organizations, women village officials, women’ s participation and rural revitalization in the past two decades. It is pointed out that there are some limitations in the existing research, such as insufficient grasp of the internal logical relationship between the influencing factors, insufficient exploration of the localization of practical experience, and theoretical research lags behind the development of practice. Finally, the article looks forward to the future research should strengthen the impact of informal institutional factors on rural governance, the application and exploration of localized Chinese gender theory in rural governance, and make good use of big data's innovative rural governance.