Mao Zedong and Gender Equality

apt at pushing the campaign for women’s suffrage, many do not even stop to consider supposedly oppressive and impoverished communist regimes as the furnaces in which female rights were first forged. The majority of world history consists of the disputes and bloodshed created by men, perpetrated by men, and for men, all while blatantly disregarding women as trivial and powerless. Pre-Communist Revolution women’s rights comprised of sexist stereotypes that strictly limited the amount of achievements that women could accomplish. Traditional Chinese society was formed through strict social structures that defined daily life in the three obediences: women had

Immediately after the war ended in 1949, with victory for the Communist Party, new and revolutionary ideas were everywhere. Along with the spread of these new ideas was the spread of better education for women. The new ideals challenged the old ways that women should not be educated as much as men, or even at all. In the Qing dynasty, getting an education and being literate were seen as injuring the chastity and purity of women. If they went to school and got an education, women would find it extremely hard for them to get married, as Chinese society at that time dictated that women who were learned were seen as promiscuous or frivolous women. This all changed after the Communist Party took over the government, promising change and equal rights. Studies found that in the 1950s, the literacy rate of women increased. This change was mainly due to the increasingly available educational opportunities for younger girls at the primary school level, and since then, women have enjoyed the same educational opportunities as men did. This development in women’s education was made possible by the Chinese Civil War and the Communist government take

Mao Zedong was a Chinese communist and father of the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong grew up farming and had arranged marriage. He got his power by getting a lot of support from peasants from China. The communists were led by Mao Zedong. The Chinese communists got their power in 1949. Mao Zedong did not make a better society economically because he did not improve the quality of lives for people because there wasn’t enough jobs. He did make a better society socially because he improved living conditions, women got freedom after the law, and expanded education.

In 1949 china was under the expression of a communist state. The regime of china was set up in similarity to the regime of Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong was part of the communist party. He followed the vision of Karl Marx, by envisioning a society under his regime that all shared equal prosperity and communism. In order to bring this vision to reality, he wanted to eliminate all capitalism and its emphasis on property rights, profits, and free-market competition. In the 1950’s in the rural of china, Mao banned free markets, which involved peasants selling farm products. However the trade of capitalism still existed through the private enterprise of remnants. Mao was dissatisfied with the outcomes towards an economy of Marxism. So he strived for a stronger approach by coming up with the Great Leap Forward. However, after the intense economic development that china had suffered from the great leap forward, it left millions of individuals throughout china suffering from the masses and deaths from the collapse of the food system. Because of the major consequences that were suffered from this approach it was unable to be left unnoticed. So, in 1960 after Moa Zedong declined all responsibility towards the disaster from the Great Leap Forward, Lui Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping were left to rectify and administer the crisis. However, their attempt to repair the economic damages towards china, only led to the reverse of Mao’s earlier policies. That were

The begins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution begins with the Hundred Flowers Campaign which took place during 1956-1957, the government embarks on this campaign with the hope that the tension between government and scholars can end, but this approach does not work and backfires. The next event which takes place in the Anti-Rights Campaign (1957-1958), this campaign disciplines those who spoke out during the Hundred flowers Campaign, a significant amount of people lots many jobs due to this and are sent away by government. This leads into the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959), this just happens to be one of Mao’s more intense programs of economic reform, in this program Mao’s main attempt was to modernize China’s economy, the consequence of this resulted in Mao’s having a temporary loss of power. He believed that all he needed to develop was agriculture and industry and believed that both

Mao Zedong was a military leader, a soldier, a principle of the Chinese Marxist theorists, and the man who led his nations cultural revolution. There are so many ways that Mao seems to be the perfect man the man who has his life together and he was a very good self promoter. He is what you could say make China 's communism a big deal during the Cold War. The Chinese revolution was placed around 4 years after the war and you could say that Mao had a big impact in that. Being that he did lead the revolution, he was the man who kind of impacted a part of

Mao was the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Above everything, he was a communist. His world revolves around him being a communist (Wood, 8, Class Notes). He believed that the world was divided into two separate sides, the communists and the capitalists. This shaped the way in which he conducted matters for mainland China because everything he did was justified by his communist ideologies (Mao, 13). Many of the things he did was because he always thought about communism being his number one priority. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are two main events that Mao led that shape his worldviews in having an underlying tone of communism which will be discussed later on in the essay. Mao wanted equality within all aspects of life throughout all classes in society. He believed that every individual should be treated the same (Mao, 19).

As Communists in China attempted to attract popular support in order to gain political power, they made promises to women

During the Cultural Revolution, China was under the rule of Communist Party leader Mao Zendong, who a majority of China, especially its youth, began to think of more closely to a God than a ruler. Although, because much of China has grown great affection over Mao, they are oblivious to what he is actually doing, and what is happening to the rest of China and the people around them. In both Red Scarf Girl and Someone Named Eva by Joan Wolf, the book is about a ruler who because so many people have begun to greatly admire and look up too, as both a ruler and role model, has forced people to become unconscious to what is actually happening to the world and people around them. In both books because of the people’s great admiration towards their leaders, they have also begun to not only adapt their leader’s thoughts, ideas, and perspectives, but have put them into action. In Red Scarf Girl, Ji-Li Jiang says “But Grandma, we have to get rid of those old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.

On October 1st 1949, Mao Zedong proclaims the foundation of the People Republic of China on Great of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing (Source from: Lecture notes). In January 1958, Mao started a variety of economic, agricultural and cultural reforms. One of the many reforms started by Mao Zedong launched "The Great Leap forward". This began in 1958 to help change China. Mao proposed the land reform and suggested to develop city. The reform makes women, industry workers and peasant became winners. However, Peasant also got land and change to owner. As far as women’s literacy is concerned. There are not women in class when Mao did not launch reforms. After that, women can go to school have a class. The plan was to originally keep China communist, and increase production of agriculture. Mao Zedong put much emphasis on economic growth, which was very important to China.

As the Communist Party of China was established in 1949, China was under Mao Ze Dong’s regime, anti western and anti imperialism ideology was imposed on the people in China. Individual thoughts as well as critical thinking of the government was restricted in China under Mao’s rule. The excess of Maoism and its inability to accomplish sustained economic development caused many people in Rural China to suffer from poverty. However, this was all changed due to a man called Deng Xiao Ping. Deng joined the communist party in 1923, and he was a political commissar for the Red Army in rural regions. Despite Mao favors him in the beginning, he’s political ideologies were at odds with Mao, therefore Deng was purged twice during the cultural revolution.

Over the course of Mao’s leadership from 1949 until his death in 1976 we can see the significance of his leadership and what made him a good and bad leader. Mao had made some very good decisions to help certain groups but also made some very bad decisions that paid the price, in some cases killing millions. Due to the social and economic changes that then followed by a significant increase in the population and weak leadership that led to rebellions from 1911 that saw the end of 3500years of rule by the Chinese imperial dynasties. The social and economic chaos then led to the formation of two political parties. The CCP, led by Mao Zedong and the GMD led by Chiang Kai Shek. Mao and his party defeated the GMD in 1949 bringing Mao into power. Mao’s main goal was to turn China into a pure communist country. Over the course of Mao’s leadership he did this by making significant social, economic and political changes to the Chinese way of life. However due to his poor leadership and the faults that he made it caused people to oppose him and get in the way of his goal. That is why in 1966 Mao decided to assert his beliefs through a series of decisions, which came to be known as the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was a hard time for many people throughout China as Mao enforced many things upon them to achieve his aim of removing capitalism. Mao used the youth of China to be that

In Mao's era, there was also little room for free speech due to the immense censorship that pervaded the period. Individual thinking and Confucian philosophy were renounced with a youth movement, The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to criticize everything and to revive the spirit of the revolution. Until his death in 1976, when Deng Xiao Ping took control of the Communist Party, Mao accentuated maintaining the revolutionary ideals of communal 'freedom' and the ultimate sacrifice of the individual for the enhancement of China.

There is no denying that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong changed the course of the history of China and shaped the China the world sees today. The amount of lives, cultural traditions, and differing intellectual thoughts that were lost and destroyed as he strove to meet his goals for the country can never be recovered or replaced. However, it had been asserted that one of the more positive effects of Chairman Mao on the people of China was his somewhat radical opinion of woman. Prior to the Communist Revolution, women’s role in Chinese society was almost completely limited to life within the home and focused on supporting their family and being submissive to their fathers and husbands. Chairman Mao

Furthermore, the Marxist revolutionary government of Communist China dealt with Confucianism negatively. “In the early 20th century, both before and after the fall of the Qing dynasty, Confucianism was harshly criticized by the New Culture Movement. (Adler 6)” The assumption of this movement was that “virtually everything about China’s traditional culture was holding it back from becoming a modern nation-state.” In fact, Confucianism was high on the list of culprits in this “blanket rejection” of traditional China. “The New Culture Movement criticized Confucianism for its age and gender-based hierarchies, which had become quite rigid during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Communist thinkers also joined this anti-Confucian trend, so by the time of the Communist victory in 1949 Confucianism in mainland China seemed virtually dead. (Adler 7)” “After the Communists took power their anti-Confucian rhetoric only increased. In addition to their professed opposition to social hierarchies, they viewed Confucianism as a feudal ideology. (Adler 8)”