Mao Era influence on Women's Rights in China

Sara Yun

11/6/2020

POLS 338W

Dr. Cathy X. Wu

Paper Proposal: Mao Zedong’s legacy on Women’s Rights

Question: How did the Mao era influence women’s rights in China? Why was the Communist Revolution significant in terms of bringing concepts of gender equality and sameness?

Working Thesis: Despite the failures Mao Zedong’s policies’ such as the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution in mid-1966, Mao did succeed in implementing numerous radical ideas in giving attention to women’s rights. In this paper, I will argue the significance of the Communist Revolution in regard to the development of China’s Women’s Movement, which made changes to the woman’s status and promoted gender equality with the rise of Mao Zedong.

(Rough) Structure:

1. Mao Zedong: Feminist ideas

· Workforce gender equality

· The arranged marriage system

· The Little Red Book

· Why does Mao advocate for women’s rights?

2. “Cultural Revolution – Impact

· “Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era”

· Female leadership / Red Guards

3. What was Mao’s real objective?

· CCP Propaganda”

· “Maoist gender discourse”

HU, ALICE. “Half the Sky, But Not Yet Equal: China's Feminist Movement.” Harvard International Review, vol. 37, no. 3, 2016, pp. 15–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26445831. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.

There is a lot of information in this article that I will be incorporating in my research paper. Alice Hu writes about feminism and the Communist Revolution, conflicts with state-sponsored feminism, and the culmination of the contemporary feminist movement.

Lingzhen, WANG. “Women’s Liberation.” Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi, edited by Christian Sorace et al., ANU Press, Australia, 2019, pp. 315–324. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvk3gng9.54. Accessed 6 Nov. 2020.

Wang Lingzhen writes about female liberation and touches on the spread of Western feminisms across China. Wang touches on the integration of Chinese women’s liberation into the Communist Revolution.

Zheng, Wang. “Creating a Socialist Feminist Cultural Front: ‘Women of China’ (1949–1966).” The China Quarterly, no. 204, 2010, pp. 827–849. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27917835. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.

This article is part of a large project on feminism in the People’s Republic of China. It focuses on the first 17 years of PRC, highlighting the socialist state feminists meaning “…women Communist Party members in powerful positions who consciously promoted women’s empowerment and equality between men and women.” They go in depth to explain the production of “CCP propaganda” and “Maoist gender discourse” to uncover the erasure of socialist feminist history.

Zhong, Xueping, et al. Some of Us : Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick, Nj, Rutgers University Press, 2001.

This is a collection of memoirs by 9 Chinese women who grew up during the Mao era and now live in the United States. Though there is quite the bias as they are all currently living in the U.S., their experiences are profound to their exploration of gender and identity living through this era.

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