She was the author of the 2001 book, Holding Up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, which is regarded as a breakthrough work of Asian American labor history.

Her 2001 book, Holding Up More Than Half the Sky, Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948–92, is noted as an important and breakthrough work by many scholars in her field, particularly because it focused on labor history of Asian Americans.

[3][1][4][5] Bao was also the founder of the US-based international organization, Chinese Society for Women's Studies (CSWS).

These included the 1993 First Chinese Women and Development Conference co-sponsored with the Center for Women’s Studies at Tianjin Normal University, which focused on the concept of gender and led to the publishing of a number of works, including Bao's Xifang nüxing zhuyi pingjie (On Western Feminist Research),[6] which was influential in feminist circles in China.

Finally, in 1998, Bao and Xu collaborated with the Sichuan Women’s Federation Women’s Studies Institute to bring together gender studies scholars and development specialists knowledgeable about China at the Gender, Poverty and Rural Development Participatory Workshop in Chengdu.