To what extent was the improved role of women in Socialist Russian in 19281941 than in Communist china in 1949-1958 due

to Communist ideology?

1. Introduction
A fundamental tenet of communist ideology as outlined by Marx and Engels is to
free marginalised groups from oppression. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the state adopted this ideal, seeking to free
women from male oppression. Articles 22 and 64 of the first Soviet Constitution of 1918
jointly proclaimed equal rights and womens suffrage, constitutionalising the pursuit of
gender equality. Mao spoke of overthrowing all authorities, specifying masculine authority
as one of the thick ropes binding the Chinese people. Changes in the social, political, and
crucially, economic context, however, changed the motivations behind womens
emancipation.

The 16 million men lost to World War One created a massive labour shortage in the
USSR, necessitating the mobilisation of women to ensure economic growth1, and the
economic crisis of the late 1920s had created critical food shortages in the cities2. Lenins
death and Stalins rise had consolidated power and ideology, resulting in a shift of party
priorities from ideology to pragmatic economic goals3.

1 Mark Harrison, G. Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies, The Economic Transformation of the

Soviet Union, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.57.
2 Barbara Alpern Engel, Women in Russia: 1700-2000, Cambridge University Press, 2004,
p.166.
3 Elizabeth Waters, "Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography", Russia's Women:
Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern
Engel and Christine D. Worobec, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991, p. 237.

In 1949, Chinas economy was suffering from the effects of decades of warfare
infrastructural destruction, disrupted agricultural production, and galloping inflation4. To foster
economic growth, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had to increase the production of
critically needed agricultural goods through an injection of new labourers into the workforce
women.

Involving women in the workforce was a way to exploit their untapped talents in order to gain
economic expedience; that this involvement was economically necessary must be taken into
account when evaluating the improvement in the role of women. Moreover, the states
emphasis on traditional, patriarchal social structures limited empowerment by imposing
female domestication. This essay will focus specifically on the economic role of women,
arguing that in both the USSR and the PRC, the changes in this role were mere by-products
of economic ambition rather than the result of ideological stance. As defined by Lenin,
gender equality is the granting of women and men complete equality in the eyes of the law,
the deliverance of women from dependence on and freedom from the oppression of the
male5. Economically, this can be interpreted as employment opportunities especially in
traditionally male sectors for women, and the freedom to choose employment and earn a
wage. Since improvement is relative, a comparison must be made against the periods
preceding Mao and Stalin.

2. Attracting women into the workforce

2.1 Initial role

4 Thomas G. Rawski, Chinas Economy After Fifty Years: Retrospect and Prospect,
University of Pittsburgh, September 1999, http://www.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/paper99/rawskiintlj.htm, retrieved 12 June 2015
5 Vladimir Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women, Pravda No. 249, 1919.

Attitudes toward female participation in the labour force were negative. In the USSR, the
Zhenotdel (womens department of the CPSU) was formed in 1919 to conduct work among
women, allow for discourse on the role of women, guide female labour and provide training
programs. It was met with harsh opposition from conservative party members and the
general public male factory workers often mocked women workers, making comments
such as woman is good for housework, but she is not fit for organisational work6,
demonstrating how entrenched patriarchy was in Soviet society.
Similarly, before 1949 in China, pro-women reforms such as outlawing footbinding and
promoting universal education had been made7. Women began to pursue higher education,
take up factory work or even pursue professional jobs8. However, few jobs were considered
appropriate for women, and those that were, generally paid women significantly less than
men. Moreover, working women faced an overwhelming amount of societal disapproval, to
the extent that they shared the social status of prostitutes9. Confucian adage and homily
succinctly condensed the inferiority of women, and concretised their roles as the primary
caregivers and homemakers, such as, A womans greatest duty is to produce a son.

The goal of economic growth necessitated the persuasion of women to join the
workforce through propaganda to recruit workers. Formerly, under the Bolsheviks, Russian
women played the idealised role of a proud worker. They were most prominently portrayed
as blacksmiths, such as in the 1920 poster, What the October Revolution Gave Worker and
6 Mary Buckley, Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union, Hertfordshire,
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, p. 101.
7 Anna M. Han, Holding Up More than Half the Sky: Marketization and the
Status of Women in China, Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, Vol. 11
(2001), p. 796
8 IDK GOTTA FIND its one of the other ones (ibid-ed)
9 Christine M. Bulger, Fighting Gender Discrimination in the Chinese Workplace,
Boston College Third World Law Journal, Vol. 20, p. 350

Peasant Women10. Blacksmithing, a traditionally male occupation, was a symbol of dignity

and physical power. Portraying women as blacksmiths, such as in Figure 1, wearing the
blacksmiths apron while holding a hammer, suggested that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had
achieved equal employment status for women, with men. Buildings pictured in the
background are labelled, Library, Women Workers Club, and represent avenues where
women could be liberated from the household11.

Figure 1: What the October Revolution gave worker and peasant women, 1920.

10 What October Revolution gave to a worker and peasant.. 1920. Photograph.

Soviet PostersWeb. 15/07/2014. <http://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?
poster=429>.
11 Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political
Art", Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July 1991), p. 278.

2.2 Propaganda
Propaganda in socialist states is well-known not to have focussed on presenting reality, but
communist ideals12, with the intention of implicitly influencing people to adapt to these ideals
by providing aspirational models for the masses. It was assumed that women would replicate
emancipatory behaviour after comparing and contrasting their own lives with those of the
models and narrowing the gap in attitudes and behaviour. Hence, socialist propaganda can
interpreted as representative of the roles of women as prescribed by socialist states, though
not as reflections of the actual role of women. In China in particular, the promotion of model
women continued a Confucian tradition of aspiring towards virtuous behaviour by emulating
model daughters, wives and widows13.

2.2.1 Women at work

With the drive for collectivisation and industrialisation fully underway in the USSR in
the 1930s, the prescribed role of women portrayed in posters was revamped, and women
were portrayed in unprecedented positions of empowerment. The collective woman-worker,
the kholkoznitza, was popularly featured in propaganda posters during the First Five Year
Plan (FYP) that promoted collectivisation14 as the antithesis of the backward baba15 who
opposed collectivisation.

12 Nelson, Cary and Lawrence, Grossberg. Marxism and the Interpretation of

Culture. University of Illinois Press, 1988, p. 5.
13 Elisabeth Croll, Changing Identities of Chinese Women: Rhetoric, Experience
and Self-perception in Twentieth-century China, Hong Kong University Press,
1995, p.73
14 Susan E. Reid, "All Stalin's Women: Gender and Power in Soviet Art of the
1930s", Slavic Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), p. 136-137.
15 Baba is a pejorative Russian term used to denote a backward, uneducated
woman who is most common;y perceived as illiterate, ignorant, superstitious and
irrational.

Figure 2: Comrade, come to our Kholkoz, 1930.

Figure 3: Woman on a locomotive, 1939

The kholkoznitza cheerfully invited her fellow peasants to join collective work (See
Figure 2), or sat self-confidently behind the wheel of a locomotive, embodying the new
opportunities that socialism offered women. By and large, women were shown to have been
presented opportunities to pursue life outside of homemaking, and as capable of industrial
work as men were traditionally regarded to be.
The CCP used similar methods to attract women into the workforce, mainly contrasting the
new society with the backward and feudal society before the liberation of 194916. The
symbol of the female model worker was a dramatic illustration of the new society and the
redefinition of womens roles (Chen, 2005). Taking its cue from the USSR, one such icon
was the female tractor driver, generally depicted as a physically imposing presence with a
confident expression (See Figure 6).

16 IDK GOTTA FIND Ibid.,p.107

Figure 4: Female model worker, 1953.

As Women confidently took on industrial and agricultural jobs new roles hitherto denied
them in support of the Revolution, as depicted (See Figures 7 and 8), a depiction of
women vastly different from the traditional woman, who was slight, reticent and restrained of
body, and was characterised by decorum and temperance.

.
Figure 5: We are proud to participate in the industrialisation of the nation, 1954.

The image of the new socialist woman, while positive, remained problematic. In the
USSR, when women were depicted in any form of industrial work, they were always
captured in positions of rest17 (see Fig. 4, 5). This reflects the prejudices that still surrounded
associating women with physical strength and heavy industrial labour, compromising the
equal footing with men the iconography seemed to suggest.

17 Susan E. Reid, op. cit., p. 138.

Figure 7: Metro worker with drilll,

1937.

Figure 6: Female worker taking part in subway

construction, 1937

However, the strong push for women to work full time outside the home was so emphatic
during the regimes first decade that social attitudes moved against those who remained at
home. Typed as family women, these women often found difficulty in justifying their
positions. Many women, due to frequent pregnancies, ill health or large numbers of small
children, found it necessary to return home, but were reluctant to go back to being
dependent and socially ostracised family women18. That state feminism went so far as to
engender such social pressure for women to work reveals the limited nature of the economic
emancipation of women despite state intentions. Rather than having the freedom to choose
their employment or lack thereof, societal attitudes had shifted so far as to deny them the
right to stay at home as family women, as a direct result of the policies of the CCP.
18 Lucy Jen Huang, A Re-Evaluation of the Primary Role of the Communist
Chinese Woman: The Homemaker or the Worker, Marriage and Family Living, Vol.
25, No. 2, p. 162

However, the genuine nature of the intentions of the CCP can be seen in the efforts of the
WF to defend family women. Articles in the mid-fifties were devoted to such topics as: It is
glorious to Serve in the Family and It is Wrong to Look Down on Family Women19.

Similarly, in the PRC, female model workers represented the universalisation of a

masculine ideal, with androgynous and masculinised features20 (See Figure 7). Posters
that did not depict masculine ideals depicted women as conventionally attractive, willowy
and slim, with highly patterned blouses and scarves, pale skin and manicured hands, rather
than representations of stocky, weather-beaten peasant women(See Figure ), depicting them
as objects for the male gaze rather than representing working women.

19 Ibid.
20 Tina Mai Chen, Female Icons, Feminist Iconography? Socialist Rhetoric and Womens
Agency in 1950s ChinaGender & History, Vol.15 No.2 August 2003, p. 275.

Figure 8: The model worker

Figure 9: New view in the rural village, 1953.

Liang Jun, China's first female

tractor driver.

Nevertheless, the state-sponsored representation of women in less subservient roles in the

home and more active roles at work is by any standard an improvement in the
representation of women, and can be seen as the states affirmation of female agency and
equality in the workplace.

2.2.2 Women in the home

While significantly less prevalent in the USSR, posters in the PRC still commonly reflected
the entrenched gender norms of the day, depicting women as caretakers and housewives.

Figure 10: Untitled propaganda poster, 1953.

Figure 11: Chairman Mao gives us a happy life, 1954.

3. Collectivisation and industrialisation

The establishment of cooperatives was expected to break down the sexual division of family
labour, which, in the Marxist view, is the root of female subordination. By eliminating the
family as the main unit of production, women would gain new opportunities for work in
remunerated collective endeavours, and the presence of cooperatives was meant to lessen
womens domestic labour. In the First Five Year Plans of the USSR and the PRC, the
liberation of women was meant to be synonymous with plan fulfilment, and a way for women
to make a contribution to the construction of socialism. Propaganda encouraged workingclass and peasant women to join the waged labour force, but so did a wage policy that set
most wages so low that families required two breadwinners to survive21.

21 Barbara Alpern Engel, op. cit., p. 166

3.1 Employment opportunities

In the USSR, by the second FYP, 3 million jobs in farm administration had been created for
women22, and by the third, 58% of all workers were women23. The rapid mechanisation of
agriculture exponentially increased the number of female tractor drivers from 8 in 1926 to
500,000 in 193924. Collectivisation created employment opportunities for women in an
unprecedented volume, even if this was part of a strategy to fortify the agricultural workforce
in case of a shortage of male workers due to war25. Machine operators reaped relatively high
wages and were able to support themselves; collectivisation had truly emancipated women
from the confines of the patriarchal household.
The expansion of the economy under industrial development created a plethora of jobs in
the manufacturing industry, service sector, and professional work. The service sector
employed about 6 million female workers by the end of the second FYP, as compared to the
1.5 million in 192626. The quality of the kind of employment available to women increased
alongside the quantity the number of women working as domestic servants fell from 400,
000 to 150,000 between1926-1939, and the number of women in the low-level service sector
skyrocketed from 55,800 to 831,000 in the same period27. A huge increment was also seen
in the number of women working in professional jobs (see Fig)

22 Marceline Hutton, "Women in Russian Society from the Tsars to Yeltsin",

Russian Women in Politics and Society, ed. Wilma Rule and Norma C. Noonan
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 67-8.
23 Susan Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside: Women's Roles in Rural
Development in the Soviet Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987,
p. 13.
24 Marceline Hutton, op. cit., p. 67-8.
25 Susan Bridger, op. cit., p.14.
26 Marceline Hutton, op. cit., p. 70.
27 Ibid., p. 69.

Yet the most marked change was in industry by 1939, 43.3% of all industrial workers were
women. In Moscow, and some other parts of the USSR, women-workers even became the
majority28. During the first FYP, the proportion of women in light industries rose by 14% and
more than doubled in heavy industry29.
Across all industries, there was an increase in female participation in the workforce (see fig.

30

In th
Similarly in the PRC, in 1956, it is estimated that 12% women in 1952 were engaged in nonagricultural labour31, between 60-75% of women were participating in collective labour by
1955, and 80-90% by 195832. In the 1950s, the Chinese government nationalised private
enterprises, becoming the largest and amost the sole employer. This centralisation gave the
state naear-total control over the execution of equal-employment policies towards women,
and the failure to do so comprehensively to realise equality betrays the insincerety in
government ideology that in practice sacrificed womens interests for economic gain.
The CCPs focus on heavy industry also stimulated a small number of women to study
science and technology, and women took up jobs as teeachers and healthcare workers,
showing an improvement in the quality as well as the quantity of womens employment. In
1952, women made up 18% of the teaching force, considerably higher than their

28 G. Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies., op. cit., p. 99-100.

29 Ibid., p. 99-100.
30 Ibid..
31 Grace C.L. Mak, Women, Education and Development in Asia: Cross-National
Perspectives, Routledge something something, p. 11.
32 Thorborg.

representation in the entire non-agricultural workforce .

As official statistics were not published by China, at the time, there are no comprehensive
figures on how many women were active in production, though officially, 90% of all Chinese
women took part in production33. Though these figures are certain to have been
exaggerated, in the initial period after the founding of the People's Republic, employed
women numbered 610,000, accounting for only 7 percent of the total work force, and an
improvement in the economic role of women is clear, though to what extent is uncertain.

3.2 Limitations to Economic Independence

In both the PRC and the USSR, despite the increase in both employment opportunities
available to and employment levels of women, economic equality remained unachieved.
Women earned 47-53% less than men across all industries in Russia34, were sexually
harassed by male colleagues, generally remained as subordinates to men35, and their work
was valued less since most of it was considered unskilled, reflecting the continuing
entrenchment of patriarchal mindsets. Wages from the collective farm were also paid to the
household rather than the individual worker.
In the PRC, though the policy of equal pay for equal work was implemented36, it was
unable to rectify the traditional perspective of women as the foot soldiers, and men as the
generals. The CCP implemented different wages from industry to industry, often assigning a
lower pay scale to womens industries such as textiles and collective enterprises37. When
33 'Ove~ew', Beqing Review, Sept. 4-10, 1995.
34 Marceline Hutton., o cit., p. 70.
35 Mary Buckley., op cit., p. 117.
36 Yongping Jiang, Employment and Chinese Urban Women Under Two Systems,
in HOLDING UP HALF THE SKY 207, 213. (Tao Jie e al eds., 2004) REDO
CITATION !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
37 Ibid., p. 213

the CCP used work points38, heavy jobs such as working with draft animals or machines
that were traditionally male, were allocated more, and women received up to 50% fewer
work points39 despite the fact that their work was more labour-intensive, and sometimes
more profitable40. Furthermore, a whole households work points were usually given to the
head of the household usually male rather than to the individual worker41. This was
further exacerbated by the emphasis on heavy industry required by the developmental
strategies outlined by Marx and Engels.

Moreover, economic participation was not made available to all women. Wives of
Stakhanovite men42 were glorified for being supportive wives but discouraged from entering
the workforce themselves43. Similarly, Chinese urban women were encouraged to stay at
home, with urban female employment reaching only about 6.6% of all women.
That gender equality was extended only to a certain group of women demonstrates the
limited nature of the economic emancipation of women under Stalin. This is exacerbated by
the double burden of work as well as household responsibilities even for women who had
the opportunities to gain higher skills to undertake more complex jobs and rise up in the
hierarchies of their occupations, they were still constrained by their household duties and
could not pursue such training. In 1936, women in the workforce spent five times as many of
their leisure hours on housework as their husbands, almost as many hours on housework as
they spent on the job. The states planned network of rural day-care centres to liberate
women from the burden of childcare fell far short of the goals set by the first FYP, and it was
women who picked up the slack. Women also took up the burden of maintaining the private
garden plot which most fed their families. Lastly, when collective farm wages were paid at all,
they customarily went to the household, and not the individual. Thus, the sheer progress in
employment can be said to have improved the economic role of women, though these

38 The work point system was utilised in communist China prior to 1956 as a
means of measuring the jobs performed by citizens in order to provide
compensation; certain jobs merited more work points, and more work points
merited a larger amount of coal, oil, salt, cotton, or other daily staples.
39 Kellee S. Tsai, "Women and the State in Post-1949 Rural China," Journal of
International Affairs 49, no. 2 (1996), http://questiaschool.com/read/1G118342418/women-and-the-state-in-post-1949-rural-china. Accessed 10/06/2015.
40 Gail Hershatter, Women in Chinas Long Twentieth Century, (2007) p. 63
41 Jamie Burnett, Womens employment rights in china: Creating Harmony for
Women in the Workplace, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Volume 17 Issue
2 Article 8 Summer 2010 p. 295
42 Stakhanovite men were lauded for surpassing their daily production quota at
work, and this concept, which arose in the middle of the second FYP, was part of
the Stakhanovite movement conceived to boost production and thus economic
growth in the USSR.
43 Mary Buckley., op cit., p. 117

developments were limited due to an unwillingness to undertake complete economic change

and liberation of women from household duties.

That gender equality was extended only to a certain group of women demonstrates the
limited nature of the economic emancipation of women under Stalin and Mao. This is
exacerbated by the double burden of work as well as household responsibilities even for
women who had the opportunities to gain higher skills to undertake more complex jobs and
rise up in the hierarchies of their occupations, they were still constrained by their household
duties and could not pursue such training. In 1936, women in the Russian workforce spent
five times as many of their leisure hours on housework as their husbands, almost as many
hours on housework as they spent on the job. The states planned network of rural day-care
centres to liberate women from the burden of childcare fell far short of the goals set by the
first FYP, and it was women who picked up the slack. Women also took up the burden of
maintaining the private garden plot which most fed their families.
Similarly in the PRC, the employment of women in rural cooperatives either shifted the
burden of domestic responsibilities to older women unable to work in cooperatives, or
increased the burden on working women. This double burden was furthermore not only
recognised but even justified by the Remin Ribao, the official party newspaper. Participation
is the inherent right and duty of rural women. Giving birth to children and raising them, as
well as.household chores are also the obligations of rural women.

Thus, the sheer progress in employment can be said to have improved the economic role of
women, though these developments were limited due to an unwillingness to undertake
complete economic change and liberation of women from household duties.

Furthermore, in regions where non-agricultural employment opportunities were

available, women performed a wider range of agricultural tasks as men pursued
other forms of work.(36) A government document in 1958 indicated that women
would be expected to compensate for the shortage of labor in agriculture caused
by male employment in newer industries:
As such, the percentage of peasant women engaged in non-domestic
production increased rapidly -- from 50 to nearly 90 percent during the first
decade of socialist rule.(38) Nonetheless, large-scale employment in agricultural
production did not indicate equality. It increased the demands on rural women
without commensurate compensation. While the policy of "equal pay for equal
work" was actively promoted, as shown above, the household and agricultural
tasks performed by women were valued less than those performed by men. In
villages where women performed the same work alongside men, or replaced the
work of men, male peasants protested and prevented the equal allocation of
work points.(39) They demanded greater compensation as a structural
requirement: As heads of households they needed to contribute more than
women to the family budget.(40) The relative decrease in the sexual division of
labor in agriculture did not restructure the sexual division of authority or labor in
the patriarchal household. Furthermore, by the 1960s, the financial cost of
maintaining the communal facilities was considered too high when the services
could be performed within the household by women for "free."(41)

3.2 Across groups of women

3.3. Across time
Perhaps most tellingly, despite the fact that the CCP was promoting the role of women in the
workforce, the party established a practice of encouraging women to join the workforce when
workers were needed and then sending them home before men when the economy was
saturated with labour44. For example, from 1953 to 1957, during the First FYP,
unemployment was high, and the government told women to serve the cause at home,
emphasising the importance of domestic work to the socialist cause through the 5 Goods
campaign45. However, 1958 onwards, during the Great Leap Forward, the government
encouraged women to join the workforce once more to take up unskilled work, freeing men
to move to skilled projects46. The number of female workers and employees more than
doubled from 3.3 Million in 1957 to 7.5 million in 195847.
While some facilities, primarily nurseries and kindergartens, had been set up pre-1958, most
only operated during the busy season and were in any case hardly sufficient in number. The
Great Leap eventually had to include efforts to socialise some of womens traditional private
labour in order to release more women for collective labour for more days per year. Crches,
year-round nurseries and kindergartens, communal dining halls and collective sewing groups
were set up on a larger scale.
This in 1958 and 1959, large numbers of women were mobilised to fill the increased demand
for labor in the collective rural sector. More women were needed in field work as men were
drawn into capital construction projects, local industries and other new economic activities.
Tens of millions of women were also mobilised to work on water conservation and
afforestation projects. Several millions took jobs in communal dining halls and nearly all of
the six to seven million workers in daycare centers were women. In late 1958 it was reported

44 Gail Hershatter, op cit, p.60

45 Christine M. Bulger, op cit, p. 350
46 Gail Hershatter, op. cit, p.60-61
47 Mak, Op cit, p. 13.

at an All-China Womens Work Conference that in most places 90% of the women were
participating in collective labor. Some model areas reported 100%.

4. Accounting for the similarities and differences.

In conclusion, the states of Socialist Russia and the Peoples Republic of China
have been both a help and a hindrance to women. In their pursuit of economic
expansion from 1929 to 1941, and 1949 to 1958 respectively, they provided the
biggest boost to the status of women through a mass effort to increase their
workforce participation and recognise their theoretical equality, in line with
Communist doctrine. That the economic role of women has broadened, insofar as
their increased quantity and quality of employment opportunities, is undoubted,
but as to whether the burdens brought by that broadening outweigh the
improvements remains to be seen.
The focus on the economic role of women also neglects to consider other spheres
of life such as social and political, in which they may have experienced an
improvement or a worsening
In both Socialist Russia and the Peoples Republic of China, rather than a
concerted attempt to consistently promote the economic emancipation of
women, it is clear that the states in question have, by and large, improved the
economic role of women only when womens special problems can be
subsumed under the larger umbrella of societys need. This is clear in the
economic
Is Marxism inherently sexist?
Perhaps womens issues are merely secondary, and progress can only be made
when they can be subsumed under the larger umbrella of societys economic
concerns. Is this in line with the Marxist school of thought?
Difference in local culture but similar ideology leading to the same objectives but
difference in execution? Economic growth as legitimiser hence everything is
ideological anyway?

AVAILANLE TO AND THE THE EMPLOYMENT LEVELS OF WOMEN

In the mid-1950s Mao Zedong said tha women form a vast reserve of labour
power which should be tappedi n the struggle to build a great socialise country.
(The Upsurge of Socialism in the Countryside, Peking, 1960, p.286) However,
government policy assumed not only that the involvement of women in social
production was necessary for the economic development of the country, but that
inbolbement in production was of the utmost importance to women themselves
as a precondition to thir emancipation and equality with men. After Engels, the
government and the womens movement emphasised that the first premise for
the emancipation and equality was the introduction of the entire female sex into
public industry, In support of this premise the following passage from Lenin was
often quotes: In order to emancipate women thoroughly and to realise real
equality between women and men, it is necessary to have public economy to let
women participate in joint production and labour, and then women would stand
in the same position as men. *Lenin, V.I., The Tasks of Working Womens
Movement in the Soviet Republic, 23 September 1919, in Women in Society,
New York, 1938, pp. 15-20*
Through employment, women were to acquire an economic independence and
access to social resources that they could use in baragaining to improve their
position. From the mid-1950s the recommendation of Mao Zedoing that women
unite and take part in production and political activity to improve the economic
and politica status of women was widely quoted. (Mao Zedong, Inscriptions for
Women of New China, 20 July 1949) ON these grounds, successive government
policies of land reform, the collectivisation fo agriculture and the eeexpansion of
the industrial and rural sectors of the economy were supported by the

P 74
Womens movement. It encouraged women to take advantage of the new
opportunities to take a full and wide-ranging role in production after the
examples of new model woman.

Although the WF at its first congress (echoing the party line_ had underlined the
crucial importance of womens participation in production as the route to
emancipation, by the mid-1950s the urban sector witnessed a slowing down of
womens employment in the urban labour force. Thus was principally because
the First Five Year Plan prioritised heavy industry (in which men predominated) in
terms of investment, while light industry (such as textiles and food processing),
in which wokmen were more usually employed, had a low investment priority.
From 1953 to 1957 the proportion of the non-agricultural labour force comprised
of women increased only slowly, from 11.7 per cent to 13.4 per cent (Andors,
1983, pp. 38-3). Subsequent WF Congresses sought to rationalise the slowdown.
Thus at its Second Congress in 1953 the official line was that no woman should
be forced to work outside the home.
This policy line was echoed in the Five Goods Campaign launched n 1955 to
promote the virtues of the socialist housewife one who managed the

household well, ensured harmony amongst family members, and brought up the
children conscientiously (Davin, 1976, p.152)

Stalin dissolved the Zhenotdel in 1930, claiming that the women question48 had been
solved. The new economic system of industrial planning established in 1928 created
remarkable improvements in the opportunities of work offered to women. Stalins priority was
to build socialism in one country by building up the economy, and because women were
conveniently, a colossal reserve of the work force49 that could be tapped on for economic
growth, 1928 heralded a surge of women participating in the workforce.
The goal of economic growth necessitated the persuasion of women to join the
workforce through propaganda to recruit workers. Formerly, under the Bolsheviks, women
played the idealised role of a proud worker. They were most prominently portrayed as
blacksmiths, such as in the 1920 poster, What the October Revolution Gave Worker and
Peasant Women50. Blacksmithing, a traditionally male occupation, was a symbol of dignity
and physical power. Portraying women as blacksmiths, such as in Figure 1, wearing the
blacksmiths apron while holding a hammer, suggested that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had
achieved equal employment status for women, with men. Buildings pictured in the
background are labelled, Library, Women Workers Club, and represent avenues where
women could be liberated from the household51.

48 The woman question refers to the problem of womens suffrage, and more
broadly, of changing the political, economic and professional roles of women, and
achieving social and sexual liberation.
49Helen Rappaport, Joseph Stalin: A Biological Companion, California, ABC-CLIO,
1999, p. 314.
50 What October Revolution gave to a worker and peasant.. 1920. Photograph.
Soviet PostersWeb. 15/07/2014. <http://www.sovietposters.com/showposter.php?
poster=429>.
51 Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political
Art", Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July 1991), p. 278.

Figure 12: What the October Revolution gave worker and peasant women, 1920.

WAS GENDER EQUALITY EXTENDED ONLY TO A CERTAIN GROUP OF WOMEN?

Ironically, wile urban women in the mid-1950s were being urged to stay at home,
in the countryside collectivisation of the land in 1955-7 mobilised womens
labour, although this was not meant in any way to lessen their domestic
responsibilities. As the official CCP newspaper, Peoples Daily, insisted in 1956:
Participation in agricultural production is the inherent right and duty of rural
women. Giving birth to children and raising them up, as well as preoccupation
with household chores are also the obligations of rural women. These things set
women apart from men. (Andors, 1983, p.42)
Women interviwed in the 1990s and early 2000s remembered that
collectivisation had simply lengthened their working day; improvements in
maternal health and lower levels of infant mortality (which meant more children
survived) also added to their domestic burdens. After paying for food at the
collective mess hall, sending children to the nurseries washing, ironing and
mending clothes, for transportation and for house-cleaning, it was found that
every month Mrs ting used up not only her 24 to 26 yuan but alosthe amount her
husband would ordinarily spend if she remained at home to look after the
children. When the reporter observed to the director of the commune that Mrs
Ting did not have a pennys profit left and that she was actually giving the state
eight hours of gratuitous work every day, he replied that Mrs Ting, however,
escaped from being enslaved to her husband.
They further recalled that, since in many cases collective and household work
was often blurred (Such as making clothes and shoes at home), their

contributions were neither given recognition nor valued although many

considered themselves more fortunate than their mothers because of greater
access to public space and more opportunities to improve literacy (Hershatter,
2004; 2007b). till, by 1957 there was a cutback in womens employment even in
the countryside .Yet barely one year later, with a radical change in priorities
enunciated by Mao Zedongs Great Leap Forward campaign, women were to be
mobilised as never before in the cause of ideological and economic
developmentLastly, double
Similar to the USSR, the All-China Democratic Womens Federation (henceforth WF),
was formally established in April 1949 to pursue the dual goals of building a socialist China
and promoting the status of women52, and declared that women would only be able to free
themselves from the feudal yoke and raise their status through active participation in
production53. As compared to the Zhenotdel, though, the WF was less of a consistent
advocate for women as much as a conduit for party policy54, regardless of whether it helped
or harmed women. This can be seen in its crackdown on prostitution, where the communist
authorities sought not only to clamp down on prostitution, but also to rehabilitate prostitutes
by finding them appropriate employment after vocational and moral training. This campaign
was, at the time, underpinned by the assumption that a womans proper place was within the
family, evidenced by how the state even took the initiative to arrange suitable marriages for
some ex-prostitutes, demonstrating their role as a public patriarch55 as compared to a
genuine attempt at emancipating women.

However, the strong push for women to work full time outside the home was so emphatic
during the regimes first decade that social attitudes moved against those who remained at
home. Typed as family women, these women often found difficulty in justifying their
positions. Many women, due to frequent pregnancies, ill health or large numbers of small
children, found it necessary to return home, but were reluctant to go back to being
dependent and socially ostracised family women56. That state feminism went so far as to
engender such social pressure for women to work reveals the limited nature of the economic
52 Zha. Searching for 'Authentic' NGOs: The NGO Discourse and Women's
Organizations in China, Chinese Women Organizing: Cadres, Feminist, Muslims,
Queers. Edited by Ping-Chuna Hsiung, Maria Jaschok, and Cecilia Milwertz.
Oxford: Berg, 2001.
53 Paul J. Bailey, Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century China, Palgrave
McMillan, SOMETHING
54 Howell, Jude. "Organizing around women and labour in China: Uneasy
Shadows, Uncomfortable Alliances." Communist and Post-Communist Studies. no.
3 (2000): 355377.
55 Paul J, Bailey, op, cit., p.105
56 Lucy Jen Huang, A Re-Evaluation of the Primary Role of the Communist
Chinese Woman: The Homemaker or the Worker, Marriage and Family Living, Vol.
25, No. 2, p. 162

emancipation of women despite state intentions. Rather than having the freedom to choose
their employment or lack thereof, societal attitudes had shifted so far as to deny them the
right to stay at home as family women, as a direct result of the policies of the CCP.
However, the genuine nature of the intentions of the CCP can be seen in the efforts of the
WF to defend family women. Articles in the mid-fifties were devoted to such topics as: It is
glorious to Serve in the Family and It is Wrong to Look Down on Family Women57.

AVAILANLE TO AND THE THE EMPLOYMENT LEVELS OF WOMEN

In the mid-1950s Mao Zedong said tha women form a vast reserve of labour
power which should be tappedi n the struggle to build a great socialise country.
(The Upsurge of Socialism in the Countryside, Peking, 1960, p.286) However,
government policy assumed not only that the involvement of women in social
production was necessary for the economic development of the country, but that
inbolbement in production was of the utmost importance to women themselves
as a precondition to thir emancipation and equality with men. After Engels, the
government and the womens movement emphasised that the first premise for
the emancipation and equality was the introduction of the entire female sex into
public industry, In support of this premise the following passage from Lenin was
often quotes: In order to emancipate women thoroughly and to realise real
equality between women and men, it is necessary to have public economy to let
women participate in joint production and labour, and then women would stand
in the same position as men. *Lenin, V.I., The Tasks of Working Womens
Movement in the Soviet Republic, 23 September 1919, in Women in Society,
New York, 1938, pp. 15-20*
Through employment, women were to acquire an economic independence and
access to social resources that they could use in baragaining to improve their
position. From the mid-1950s the recommendation of Mao Zedoing that women
unite and take part in production and political activity to improve the economic
and politica status of women was widely quoted. (Mao Zedong, Inscriptions for
Women of New China, 20 July 1949) ON these grounds, successive government
policies of land reform, the collectivisation fo agriculture and the eeexpansion of
the industrial and rural sectors of the economy were supported by the

P 74
Womens movement. It encouraged women to take advantage of the new
opportunities to take a full and wide-ranging role in production after the
examples of new model woman.

Although the WF at its first congress (echoing the party line_ had underlined the
crucial importance of womens participation in production as the route to
emancipation, by the mid-1950s the urban sector witnessed a slowing down of
womens employment in the urban labour force. Thus was principally because
the First Five Year Plan prioritised heavy industry (in which men predominated) in
terms of investment, while light industry (such as textiles and food processing),
57 Ibid.

in which wokmen were more usually employed, had a low investment priority.
From 1953 to 1957 the proportion of the non-agricultural labour force comprised
of women increased only slowly, from 11.7 per cent to 13.4 per cent (Andors,
1983, pp. 38-3). Subsequent WF Congresses sought to rationalise the slowdown.
Thus at its Second Congress in 1953 the official line was that no woman should
be forced to work outside the home.
This policy line was echoed in the Five Goods Campaign launched n 1955 to
promote the virtues of the socialist housewife one who managed the
household well, ensured harmony amongst family members, and brought up the
children conscientiously (Davin, 1976, p.152)