To what extent was the improved role of women in Socialist Russian in 1928-1941 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 growth[footnoteRef:1], and the economic crisis of the late 1920s had created critical food shortages in the cities[footnoteRef:2]. Lenins death and Stalins rise had consolidated power and ideology, resulting in a shift of party priorities from ideology to pragmatic economic goals[footnoteRef:3]. [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 inflation[footnoteRef:4]. 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. [4: Thomas G. Rawski, Chinas Economy After Fifty Years: Retrospect and Prospect, University of Pittsburgh, September 1999, http://www.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/paper99/rawski-intlj.htm, retrieved 12 June 2015]

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 male[footnoteRef:5]. 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. [5: Vladimir Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women, Pravda No. 249, 1919. ]

2. Attracting women into the workforce2.1 Initial role

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 work[footnoteRef:6], demonstrating how entrenched patriarchy was in Soviet society. [6: Mary Buckley, Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union, Hertfordshire, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989, p. 101.]

Similarly, before 1949 in China, pro-women reforms such as outlawing footbinding and promoting universal education had been made[footnoteRef:7]. Women began to pursue higher education, take up factory work or even pursue professional jobs[footnoteRef:8]. 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 prostitutes[footnoteRef:9]. 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. [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]

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 Peasant Women[footnoteRef:10]. 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 household[footnoteRef:11]. [10: What October Revolution gave to a worker and peasant.. 1920. Photograph. Soviet PostersWeb. 15/07/2014. .] [11: Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political Art", Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July 1991), p. 278.]

Figure 1: What the October Revolution gave worker and peasant women, 1920. 2.2 PropagandaPropaganda in socialist states is well-known not to have focussed on presenting reality, but communist ideals[footnoteRef:12], 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 widows[footnoteRef:13]. [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]

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 collectivisation[footnoteRef:14] as the antithesis of the backward baba[footnoteRef:15] who opposed collectivisation. [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 1949[footnoteRef:16]. 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 6: 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 8: 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 rest[footnoteRef:17] (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 5: Female worker taking part in subway construction, 1937Figure 4: Metro worker with drilll, 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 women[footnoteRef:18]. 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. 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 Women[footnoteRef:19]. [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] [19: Ibid.]

Similarly, in the PRC, female model workers represented the universalisation of a masculine ideal, with androgynous and masculinised features[footnoteRef:20] (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. [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 9: The model workerFigure 10: 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 11: Untitled propaganda poster, 1953.Figure 12: 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 working-class 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 survive[footnoteRef:21]. [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 women[footnoteRef:22], and by the third, 58% of all workers were women[footnoteRef:23]. The rapid mechanisation of agriculture exponentially increased the number of female tractor drivers from 8 in 1926 to 500,000 in 1939[footnoteRef:24]. 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 war[footnoteRef:25]. Machine operators reaped relatively high wages and were able to support themselves; collectivisation had truly emancipated women from the confines of the patriarchal household. [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.]

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 1926[footnoteRef:26]. 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 period[footnoteRef:27]. A huge increment was also seen in the number of women working in professional jobs (see Fig) [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 majority[footnoteRef:28]. During the first FYP, the proportion of women in light industries rose by 14% and more than doubled in heavy industry[footnoteRef:29]. [28: G. Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies., op. cit., p. 99-100.] [29: Ibid., p. 99-100.]

Across all industries, there was an increase in female participation in the workforce (see fig. [footnoteRef:30]. [30: Ibid..]

In thSimilarly in the PRC, in 1956, it is estimated that 12% women in 1952 were engaged in non-agricultural labour[footnoteRef:31], between 60-75% of women were participating in collective labour by 1955, and 80-90% by 1958[footnoteRef:32]. 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. [31: Grace C.L. Mak, Women, Education and Development in Asia: Cross-National Perspectives, Routledge something something, p. 11. ] [32: Thorborg. ]

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 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 production[footnoteRef:33]. 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. [33: 'Ove~ew', Beqing Review, Sept. 4-10, 1995.]

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 Russia[footnoteRef:34], were sexually harassed by male colleagues, generally remained as subordinates to men[footnoteRef:35], 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. [34: Marceline Hutton., o cit., p. 70. ] [35: Mary Buckley., op cit., p. 117. ]

In the PRC, though the policy of equal pay for equal work was implemented[footnoteRef:36], 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 enterprises[footnoteRef:37]. When the CCP used work points[footnoteRef:38], 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 points[footnoteRef:39] despite the fact that their work was more labour-intensive, and sometimes more profitable[footnoteRef:40]. Furthermore, a whole households work points were usually given to the head of the household usually male rather than to the individual worker[footnoteRef:41]. This was further exacerbated by the emphasis on heavy industry required by the developmental strategies outlined by Marx and Engels. [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] [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/1G1-18342418/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 ]

Moreover, economic participation was not made available to all women. Wives of Stakhanovite men[footnoteRef:42] were glorified for being supportive wives but discouraged from entering the workforce themselves[footnoteRef:43]. Similarly, Chinese urban women were encouraged to stay at home, with urban female employment reaching only about 6.6% of all women. [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]

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 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-domesticproduction 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 labour[footnoteRef:44]. 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 campaign[footnoteRef:45]. 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 projects[footnoteRef:46]. The number of female workers and employees more than doubled from 3.3 Million in 1957 to 7.5 million in 1958[footnoteRef:47]. [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. ]

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 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 question[footnoteRef:48] 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 force[footnoteRef:49] that could be tapped on for economic growth, 1928 heralded a surge of women participating in the workforce. [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. ] [49: Helen Rappaport, Joseph Stalin: A Biological Companion, California, ABC-CLIO, 1999, p. 314. ]

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 Women[footnoteRef:50]. 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 household[footnoteRef:51]. [50: What October Revolution gave to a worker and peasant.. 1920. Photograph. Soviet PostersWeb. 15/07/2014. .] [51: Victoria E. Bonnell, "The Representation of Women in Early Soviet Political Art", Russian Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July 1991), p. 278.]

Figure 1: 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 women[footnoteRef:52], and declared that women would only be able to free themselves from the feudal yoke and raise their status through active participation in production[footnoteRef:53]. As compared to the Zhenotdel, though, the WF was less of a consistent advocate for women as much as a conduit for party policy[footnoteRef:54], 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 patriarch[footnoteRef:55] as compared to a genuine attempt at emancipating women. [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]

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 women[footnoteRef:56]. 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. 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 Women[footnoteRef:57]. [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] [57: Ibid.]

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)