200 words
Tl1788100
WomeninChina.pptx
The People’s Republic of China October 1, 1949
Feminism in New China
Women of the Mao Era and Post-Mao
State Feminism under Mao Zedong (1949-76)
Reading:
Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women’s Public Sphere in China” （1999）.
I. State Feminism: Top Down Women’s Liberation
Legal guarantee
The Constitution of 1954
Article 96: “Women in the People’s Republic of China enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of political, economic, cultural, social and family life.”
The Marriage Law of 1950
More radical that the CCP marriage law of 1931
Article 1: The feudal marriage system based on arbitrary and compulsory arrangements and the supremacy of man over woman, and in disregard of the interests of the children, is abolished.
Article 10 Husband and wife have equal rights in the possession and management of family property.
Article 17. Divorce is granted when husband and wife both desire it. In the event the husband or the wife alone insisting upon divorce, it may be granted only when mediation by the district people’s government and the judicial organ has failed to bring about a reconciliation.
1950s posters in the Campaign of Promoting the Marriage Law
http://chineseposters.net/themes/marriage-law.php
B. The All-China Women’s Federation: fulian
two-fold function:
-- to promote party’s policies
-- protect specific women’s interests
The CCP never allowed its women’s movement independence.
C. Women Work outside Home
Obtain economic independence
Contribute to the economic modernization
Equal work equal pay
D. Regulations of women’s reproduction
Early 1950s: Mao rejected a family planning policy led to a high birth rate.
Birth control
From the early 1970s:
late marriage
Post-Mao: 1979 one-child-per-couple policy
Red: birth rate
Blue: death rate
http://geographyfieldwork.com/ChinaDemographicTransition.htm
13
II. Did all of the laws and policies result in gender equality for women under Mao?
Some progress
Unequal:
--male dominated state
--laws not implemented much in rural areas
--women in low-paid job
--”double burden”
The problem of double burden
Solutions:
-- Childcare
-- the “iron girl” model:
Group of young peasant women formed the iron girl production team in 1964 in Dazhai, Shanxi, became the national model.
Who are the “iron” girls?
III. Yang: State feminism led to gender erasure, desexualization, and masculinization of women’s bodies
Promote genderless, socialist, new person
Demand women to be the same as men in work
Mao: “The times are different. Now men and women are the same. Female comrades can do whatever male comrades can do.”
How is gender equality expressed in these posters? Gender features?
“I am Haiyan.”
19
Desexualization
Love: “personal matter”
The Red Detachment of Women: film and ballet (In Yang’s essay)
IV. How did state feminism affect Chinese women? Personal Experiences
Wang Zheng’s essay
From Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era
Papper topic 6: State feminism under Mao Zedong’s rule (1949-76) tried to promote gender equality. How did this affect Chinese women of different age and background?
a socialist new person; “an agent for change”
Decline of State Feminism; Rise of New Chinese Feminism
I. Decline: less government control
Change in Fulian: acting more on behalf of women
--opposing women’s returning home
--run the “pioneers project” to offer professional retraining (since 1995)
II. Rise of Independent Women’s Voices: New Chinese Feminism
Feminist scholar Li Xiaojiang (b. 1951)
began in western literature
established women studies in university in the late 1980s
argues: self-liberation (not liberation led by men or by the government)
III. Women’s Literature: Wang Anyi (b. 1954; sent-down youth)
The works of Wang Anyi “explore the complexities, pleasures, and trials of women’s sexual experiences and foreground women’s gender subjectivity.” (Yang: 63)
IV. the Fourth United Nations Women’s Conference as a pushing force
Beijing, 1995
Over 30,000 women attended
Chinese women (5,000) formed their NGOs; 47 panels
increased contact on the people’s level
pushed for new laws by the government on women
Red Sorghum: “reascendant masculinity”
