Women and China's Socialist Construction, 1949–78

Volume 17 | Issue 12 | Number 2 | Article ID 5289 | Jun 15, 2019 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Women and China’s Socialist Construction, 1949–78 Gail Hershatter Introduction work a double shift—for example, in the Mao era, the labor of women who put in one shift The chapter that follows is excerpted from my during the day in the collective fields and book Women and China’s Revolutions (Rowman another at night bent over a spinning wheel or and Littlefield, 2019), which asks: If we place loom. women at the center of our account of China’s last two centuries, how does this change our The second theme of the book is the symbolic understanding of what happened? Women and work performed by gender itself, work that China’s Revolutions takes a close look at the intersected with women’s lives and interests places where the Big History of recognizable but was not identical to them. The question of events intersects with the daily lives ofwhat women should do and be was a constant ordinary people, using gender as its analytic topic of public debate during China’s lens. Building on the research of gender studies transformation. Sometimes Woman was scholars since the 1970s, it establishes that deployed as a symbol of a weakened culture; China’s modern history is not comprehensible alternatively, Woman became a sign that China without close attention to women’s labor and was entering the ranks of modern nations. Woman as a flexible symbol of social problems, Sometimes women were decried as ignorant national humiliation, and politicaland dependent drags on the national economy, transformation. and sometimes they were glorified as mothers who could save the nation or heroines who Two themes recur throughoutWomen and could hasten the achievement of socialism. China’s Revolutions. The first theme is the Women and China’s Revolutions explores what importance of women’s labor, both visible and sort of work the symbol of Woman was doing. invisible. The labor of women in domestic and What concerns did people express through the public spaces shaped China’s move from language of gender? How did that language empire to republic to socialist nation to rising work, and why was it so powerful? Under what capitalist power. Some of that labor was circumstances did women themselves articulate recognized by state authorities or intellectuals, and act upon expanded possibilities for being a leaving a documentary record that allows us to woman? reconstruct how and why women’s labor was valued. Some of it, however, was not so visible “The Socialist Construction of Women, in the historical record. Women’s hidden 1949-78,” which is Chapter 8 of the book, reproductive labor included not only childbirth, considers women as objects and agents of state but also feeding and clothing household campaigns to end prostitution, establish members, raising and educating children, thoroughgoing marriage reform, and retrain caring for the elderly, maintaining community midwives across rural China. With an ambitious ties, and producing handicrafts that generated plan to develop industry and collectivize income for their families. This labor was crucial agriculture, the PRC Party-state radically both to the survival of households and to big rearranged women’s working lives and their state projects that depended upon women to social communities in both cities and rural 1 17 | 12 | 2 APJ | JF areas. This chapter assesses the interaction of struggles, the sidelining and persecution of Party-state notions of women’s liberation with intellectuals, the lifelong stigmatizing of adults social practices in households, schools, and whose class backgrounds were suspect, the workplaces. It traces the reworking of gender terrible human cost of misguided state roles in two major state campaigns: the Great economic initiatives, and the upheaval entailed Leap Forward (1958-1960), which resulted in a in major political campaigns.1 Without catastrophic famine, and the Culturalminimizing the importance of those aspects of Revolution period (1966-1976), in which many Chinese socialism, this chapter explores a young urban women participated in the Red different set of questions: Did women have a Guard movement and then were sent to live socialist revolution? If so, which women, and and work in the countryside for an indefinite when? How did the revolutionary process shape stay. The chapter also examines how intensified women’s daily lives, and how did women’s investment in rural health and education, and labor shape the revolutionary process? the consolidation of women’s role in collective Although the Chinese Communist Party guided agriculture, fundamentally altered thenational policy and the state apparatus dynamics of rural women’s lives. During the throughout this period, it had no unified theory Mao years, Woman as symbol (in the form of of socialism on which to draw, much less one actual women labor models and composite already tailored to the particular circumstances figures in propaganda posters) was mainly of China. Socialism was improvised, in part invoked for her potential as socialist producer, based on the experience of the Soviet Union, rather than for her role in social reproduction. but always with attention to local As the chapter observes, “The Party-state’s circumstances. The Party itself was riven by symbol of Woman—emancipated, with full frequent arguments about what socialism political rights, striding forward into the should look like and how it should be socialist future—had only a distant, if inspiring, constructed. Most of these arguments were not relationship to the daily lives and labor of directly about women’s labor—everyone agreed women.” it was necessary. Nor were they about Woman as symbol—everyone agreed, prematurely, that For full citation of references, see Women and the basic conditions for women’s liberation had China’s Revolutions (Rowman and Littlefield, been established successfully by the official 2019). recognition that women had equal political rights with men. --Gail Hershatter The All-China Women’s Federation was When the Chinese Communist Partyestablished as a national mass organization led established the People’s Republic of China in by the Party. Building on organizational forms 1949, its members brought with them almost developed in the base areas, it had branches three decades of experience in mobilizing attached to every level of government. It was women, mainly under circumstances of political meant to ensure that women’s interests were suppression and war. After 1949, women’s represented and that women were informed labor and Woman as symbol were central to the about their part in national reconstruction. A Party-state vision of socialist modernization. state-published magazine devoted to women, The period of socialist development ran from Women of China (Zhongguo funü), kept the establishment of the PRC in 1949 through women’s contributions and issues visible to a Mao’s death in 1976 and the beginning of national audience.2 But schisms within the economic reforms in 1978. Many accounts of Party about how to develop the economy, and this period have focused on internecine Party debates after the Sino-Soviet split of 1960 2 17 | 12 | 2 APJ | JF about the role China should take in opening a had easier access to schools and hospitals, and new road to socialism, affected the lives of enjoyed a relatively stable supply of food, cloth, women even when gender equality was not and other daily goods. The urban-rural divide explicitly on the agenda. meant that the daily activities and sense of possibilities were different for farming women This chapter begins with three campaigns and city women. This chapter pays attention to intended to stabilize families: the Marriage Law those differences. campaign, which was conducted in the context of land reform; the campaign to introduce The second theme is that women’s labor scientific midwifery in rural areas; and the undergirded socialist construction in ways that urban campaign against prostitution. The were not completely recognized. The socialist chapter then turns to the mobilization of discourse on labor had little to say about women and the changing gendered division of domestic labor, which women and their families labor during urban and rural drives forsaw as women’s responsibility. Even as women economic development. It concludes with two took on new tasks outside the home, the iconic campaigns of the Mao years, neither constant demands of household tasks explicitly about gender, which had profound structured their days before, during, and after effects on different groups of women. The their labor for urban work units or the rural Great Leap Forward and its ensuing famine collective. The tasks required of rural women reshaped the lives of rural women, and the were different and more demanding than those Cultural Revolution and its movement to send urban women had to perform. But for both, the urban youth to the countryside changed the incessant requirement that they maintain their lives of a generation of urban women. Two households was not regarded as an urgent major themes underlie this chapter. The first is problem to be solved in the socialist present. It that “women” in the period of socialistwas deferred to the communist future, when construction, as in all previous periods, were material abundance and socialized housework not a homogeneous group. Generation, region, would lighten women’s burden. In the ethnicity, and level of education all helped meantime, domestic labor performed thriftily determine which events of Big History most and with diligence was visible in public touched women’s lives. But perhaps the most discourse as a sign of women’s profound divide during the socialist period was accomplishment, but not as an essential—and unremunerated—contribution to the building of that between city and countryside, a gap socialism. The Party-state’s symbol of exacerbated by state socialist policies.

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