Women Flashcards
Main issues facing women:
- women had subservient role
- baby girls victims of infanticide
- arranged marriages and concubinage
- the three obidences
- no education
The three obediences
Subservient to:
- father when young
- husband when married
- sons when a mother
Literacy rate for women vs men in China (1930s)
Men = 30%
Women = 1%
basic literacy skills over 7 years old
The issue of foot binding
Women often rehabilitated/physically crippled by foot binding.
Small feet seen as more sexually appealing, so suitors willing to pay a higher ‘bride price’
Mao called arranged marriages:
‘Indirect rape’
Mao quotes on marriage:
‘Rottenness of the marriage system’
‘No freedom of choice in love’
‘Women hold up half the sky’
When was the NEW MARRIAGE LAW introduced?
1950
What did the New Marriage law do?
- banned arranged marriages
- banned concubinage/polygamy
- ‘bride price’ AND dowry prohibited
- wives could inherit their husbands property
- divorce easier
- bastard children given same rights as all other children
How effective was the NEW MARRIAGE LAW?
Gave women rights they had not ever experienced BUT:
-divorce rates soared
-husbands lost their perceived ‘financial investments
-violence broke out in poorer families to reclaim wives
-everyone lost their inherited land in collectivisation years later
What did the communes system do?
Property rights wives gained in the NML(1950) were lost.
How did collectivisation/communes increase/double work load for women?
- forced to work on the land AND were solely responsible for household chores still!
- physically ill-suited for some tasks like ploughing but still forced
Child care in the collectives
- while mothers worked in the fields, children placed in communal kindergartens
-staff untrained
- dirty so diseases and death were common
Little food in the communes especially for women in the 1950s, lead to:
- women turning to sex-work to buy food
- many died from suicide
Why was food so little for women?
Food allocated based on work points:
Women were ill-suited for many tasks, so men would often outperform them in physical labour.
So women often couldn’t provide enough for them or their families
Sexual abuse and pregnancy
- sexual abuse common in the communes
- women forced to work during pregnancy so many miscarried
CCP on women
‘And indispensable force in defeating the enemy and building a new China’
How was maos belief on mobilising the masses applied to women
The Women’s Association was set up to encourage political activism from women
Womens association membership
76 million
Main objectives of the Women’s Association
- campaigned against sex work
- against domestic violence
- encouraged women to denounce men who had beaten their wives
Success of the New Marriage Law
By 1960s child and arranged marriages are extremely rare!
Increasing number of women in education
- sucess in encouraging sending more girls to school instead of working in the home
- up until 1949 only 38% of girls finished primary education and after 1959 100% did!
- 1978 45% of primary school students were female
The Military and women
PLA encouraged women to join! To escape rural poverty!
Even able to be promoted to officers.
Evidence for improvement in the status of women
- took advantage of the NML - courting who they want, escaping abusive marriages etc
- confidence (empowerment) and freedom of speech increased - able to air out grievances by the speak bitterness campaign
- given opportunities for leadership in the RedGaurd during the Cult.Rev. And officers in PLA
- Jiang Quing even a party leader (part of the Gang of Four)
- pro woman propaganda like the ballet: Red detachment of Women
Problems with changing views of women
- traditional male attitudes prevailed (chores and childcare are women’s jobs)
- some areas didn’t enforce legislation like the marriage law
- Song Qingling (high ranking official) complained her views weren’t being treated as equal
- arranged marriages and foot binding continued in far-off regions
