Women's Freedom during China's Revolutionary Period
During the revolutionary period in China from 1921 to 1934, although there were undercurrents of an actual feminist movement, according to Kay Ann Johnson in Women, the Family & Peasant Revolution in China, women’s progress resulted more as a necessity of the war than the leadership’s commitment to emancipate women. Furthermore, when tension arose between men and women, the leadership usually appeased men over women. By not discussing the mentality of the political parties and the dynamics of the war, Hughes and Hughes’ critique lacks an explanation of the underlying motives that drove these parties to sometimes support women and other times reject women’s interests.
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Hughes and Hughes refer to the Guomindang (KMT), another revolutionary party, that issued demands “for equality between the sexes, permission for women to inherit property, [and] free marriage and divorce” (H&H 236).
However, Hughes and Hughes do not fully explain the tensions and underlying reasons for the CCP’s support of women. Johnson, on the other hand, argues that from the onset, the “Party distrusted the feminist groups themselves as elitist, bourgeois reformers” (Johnson 40). Therefore, any progress made by the Party in favor of women was not true emancipation but emancipation disguised under ulterior motives. Instead, the Party deemed women’s reforms advantageous to their political strategy and position in the war. For example, after 1928, the Communists’ policies were aimed at increasing women’s activities that supported the war effort and the economy. It became important for the Party to win women’s support because women were able to affect men’s decisions. Sometimes women would attempt to dissuade their husbands or sons from joining the army. Therefore, by gaining women’s support, men’s participation in the army would increase. In addition, being able to teach women agricultural duties greatly increased the availability of men for battle. Thus, a successful war effort meant that the Party was able “to tap the
Women’s right has been a problem throughout the nineteen century. Women generally have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Wifehood and motherhood were women's most significant professions, in the 19th century; however, women won the right to vote and increased their educational and job opportunities. Women were long considered naturally weaker than men. Prior to the American Revolution the women were viewed as weak and unable to perform hard work. Also, women place were the house, take care their children, clean the house, organized the house, cook, and take care animals. During the American Revolution many women faced a lot problems because they
During the 18th Century women in China continued to be subordinated and subjected to men. Their status was maintained by laws, official policies, cultural traditions, as well as philosophical concepts. The Confucian ideology of 'Thrice Following'; identified to whom a women must show allegiance and loyalty as she progressed throughout her life-cycle: as a daughter she was to follow her father, as a wife she was to follow her husband, and as a widow she was to follow her sons. Moreover, in the Confucian perception of the distinction between inner and outer, women were consigned to the inner domestic realm and excluded from the outer realm of examinations, politics and public life. For
When it comes to discussing the manners and customs that dominated in China in the past century, numerous topics appear. Thanks to the numerous written testimonies, we can almost reconstruct the life and experiences of people in ancient China. Of course, many of the practices described are not only interesting, but surprising. In this paper I am going to take a closer look at the status of women in ancient Chinese family.
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
Historians once presumed that, since women during the American Revolution had limited or no political decisions, and demonstrated little concern in achieving the franchise, they were fundamentally apolitical members of the society. In the modern world, scholars acknowledge the fact that women played a leading role during the war and they were actively involved in debates, which accompanied the movement towards independence, and that the war expanded their territories in their political and legal roles. Furthermore, the male welcomed women’s support during the war that was a very instrumental move towards the expansion of the women’s roles in the society unlike in the past when women were restricted to household chores. As women filled important roles because of the shortage of men to fill these roles, like managing business and farms, the idea that females were lesser than males started to fade away (Bielich, 2008). The laws prior to and during the revolution did not acknowledge females as equal to men in
Women had to struggle to be heard on equal terms with their male comrades. Women began to make small protests accusing the men of the Young Lords of male chauvinism and demanded that the party oppose machismo and explicitly support the liberation of women. It took a long time, but then the women achieved their task, but they also brought with them that the LGBTQ community, raised its voice and wanted to take a place in the revolution. the Young Lords realized that the woman is a treasure with a lot power in her hands.
Not until the twentieth century did things start to turn around for women in china. This is when a woman’s movement began to spread and demanded an end to foot binding. Perhaps the biggest factor in women’s equality was communism. Communists believe that women were equal to men and the government started to pass laws in favor of women. One law was The Chinese constitution of the early 1950s which said that “Chinese women enjoyed equal rights with men in political, economic, social, cultural, and family life. The state protected women’s rights and interest, practiced equal pay for work and provided equal opportunity for women’s training and promotion (W., Jacob 2). Another law was The Inheritance Law, which allowed women to inherit family property. The Marriage Law eliminated arranged marriages and said that “both women and men [are] free to choose their marriage partners, and widows [are]
In this assignment I will evaluate and consider the arguments of the women’s right movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s by critically analyzing the differences and similarities between the liberal and radical feminists, the Equal Rights Act, similarities and differences between those who supported and opposed the Equal Rights Act, working class women who opposed and also surged the feminist movement, different key events such as the National Organization of Women that influenced the development of a women’s right movement, and the long range consequences of the modern women’s right movement.
Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of sources This internal assessment will explore the question: How well did World War II establish a foundation for Women to be accepted into the American society as workers? The role of women during the latter part of the war and after the war will be investigated, specifically 1936 through 1950. The war was their breakthrough into society but the way they were treated after the war will be investigated more deeply.
“Fighting….maybe for freedom, but probably not” was an indication of just how “revolutionary” the Revolution War era was for women. As America was going through a new estate with the legacy of the revolution, and striving for a new national governance, opportunities arose for both men and women. During the revolutionary era, woman showed achievements in war and education. Although, women developed a new consciousness that increased opportunities to influence public life, it was often limited and ridiculed by women’s traditional roles to society.
In traditional Chinese culture, women were inferior to men. They were not allowed to make any decisions concerning their families. Their only purpose in life was to stay home and take care of the households. "A woman's duties are to cook the five grains, heat the wine, look after her parents-in-law, make clothes, and that's all! ...she must follow the `three submissions.' When she is young, she must submit to her parents. After her marriage, she must submit to her husband. When she is widowed, she must submit to her son. These are the rules of propriety." ("The Mother Of Mencius", p.34) That's the principle that was followed in traditional China. Some of the examples of this are discussed in this
Women’s rights and equality were cornerstones of Chinese modernization, especially of Mao’s vision of an egalitarian socialist state (illustrated by his slogan that “women could hold up half the sky”). Increased female participation in labor seen as essential to the state and party agenda. While there were without a doubt many issues women still faced within this period, many policies of the Chinese Communist Party contributed to women’s equality. However, after Mao’s death and Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power and his vision of the nation as “Socialist with Chinese Characteristics,” and the implementation of China’s Open Door Policy, women have again become subordinated in many spheres of society. Yet instead of relying on male political theorists
The Chinese Communist Party's official discourse on women's liberation originated from Karl Marx’s theories of communist revolution and the history of private ownership, European Socialist views on women's liberation, the Soviet model of women's liberation, the May Fourth feminist movement, and Chinese nationalism of the early twentieth century from when the party was first founded in 1921. Wang Zheng discusses how the May Fourth Movement accelerated the idea of advancing women’s rights in China. The feminist movement of this period brought women's liberation into China's political discourse, forcing all current and future political movements to contain policies and ideas for increasing women’s rights in order to be seen as progressive. Thus, the Chinese Communist Party deemed women’s emancipation as one of their ideological goals and pledges. The Party began to institutionalize their ideas of women's
First, Chinese society is still in the process of social forms of agriculture, and gradually deepened since millennia sexist, patriarchal consciousness and spiritual entity unlikely to be essential impact even be destroyed. Salient features of the agricultural community and the agricultural civilization is centralization and personal attachment, the extent of human society that is a lower degree of independence, because of this social form of production, and other social activities objectively excluded women, men occupied the absolute rule status, feminist issues is bound to be "shadowing." In recent decades, although China has laws to protect women's rights and social organizations, but due to the lack of social forms the background and achieve the objective reality of feminism, these laws and organizations tend to become some kind of a symbol or a "national attitude."
Betty Friedan wrote that "the only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own." The message here is that women need more than just a husband, children, and a home to feel fulfilled; women need independence and creative outlets, unrestrained by the pressures of society. Throughout much of history, women have struggled with the limited roles society imposed on them. The belief that women were intellectually inferior, physically weaker, and overemotional has reinforced stereotypes throughout history. In the 1960s, however, women challenged their roles as "the happy little homemakers." Their story is the story of the Women's Liberation