China's Women: The Change and the Challenge

CHINA’S WOMEN: THE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE

Govind Kelkar

The Communist Party of China has always regarded the emancipation of women as an integral part of the general problem of the Chinese revolution. At various stages of the revolutionary movement, the Party Leadership expressed concern for women’s liberation and for their participation in productive labour and the socialist construction of the country. The party’s concern for women’s liberation is reflected in some of the popular quotations of Chairman Mao:

The day all women in China stand on their feet is the time for victory for the Chinese revolution.

Times have changed and today men and women are equal. Whatever men comrades can accomplish, women comrades can too.

I have been interested in the women’s movement in China for the past several years. I had informed the Chinese officials about my interest in the women’s movement and had solicited their help in meeting the responsible members of Women’s Federations in Peking, Shanghai and Canton. In addition, in the other places I visited in China, I had an opportunity to dis-

cuss the status and role of women with a cross-section of people, which included leading Party members, administrative intellectuals, doctors, ‘advanced’ and model workers, as well as women and men from the worker-peasant families.

There were two major themes that emerged from the discussions. The first one was related to the changed position of women in the present Chinese society. The participation in socially productive labour was fundamental to women’s emancipation in China. Only under the guidance of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s Thoughts, proletarian politics and the leadership of the Communist Party of China, women could liberate themselves. The other theme was a lack of political consciousness regarding the means to achieve the goals of a socialist society, a concept which in many cases advocated a unique ‘female’ position of women and suggested general constraints regarding women achieving full equality and socio-economic parity with men. In this paper I shall attempt to discuss how the Chinese women view their great progress in the revolutionary society, and the tasks that still require their protracted struggle in order to achieve complete liberation.

Women in the traditional Chinese society occupied an extremely low status and had no right to participate even in the most general social political activities. “In the old society, women were treated as slaves of the family and instruments for producing children’.’ They were required to function within the framework of three obediences- “Before marriage, obey your father, after marriage, obey your husband. After husband dies, obey your son.” A vast majority of women lacked economic independence and had very little opportunity to receive even an elementary education. The state of being uncultured was considered a virtue in women in the Confucian society.

Women in the old society lived in an ignorance which resulted often in superstitious practices and resignation to fate. Customs such as concubinage, child-wife, slave-maid, bound feet and the required obedience towards her elders and husband all contributed to make a woman’s life one of hardship and misery. Chairman Mao in 1927 put it this way: “A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of authority (political authority, clan authority and religious authority). As for women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also dominated by men (the authority of the husband).”

The emancipation of women started during the May 4th Movement. In 1917 under the impact of the Soviet Revolution and with the practice of Marxism-Leninism, the women’s movement began to grow. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the women’s Movement gained momentum. Mao Tse-Tung believed the key to toppling the feudal, hierarchal system and Confucian ideology lay in the overthrow of the landlords who formed the backbone of all rural authority. Once the peasants succeeded in seizing power from the landlords, the other authoritarian-feudal systems would crumble. At the same time, the Party leadership felt that the special hardships suffered by women in the traditional social order of China provided them with great revolutionary potential. Mao said, “We began organising women’s associations upon their entry into the villages to be liberated.”

In its drive for expansion and consolidation of the peasant movement, the Sixth National Congress of the communist Party of China decided in 1928 to absorb peasant women into their revolutionary movement. The party members and cadres helped women to organise themselves into associations, which aimed at drawing women into both the revolutionary movement and productive activities such as spinning, weaving, . shoe-making, sewing, etc. The women’s associations also took up the cases of maltreatment of wives by their husbands and in-laws. Although the associations met with strong resistance from the men, in time women’s earning powers gained and complaints were allayed.

Women’s position in the Communist controlled area was further strengthened during the land reform when the land was re-distributed to the individual, rather than only to the household head. For the first time in Chinese history women legally possessed and controlled land. Later the transformation in the ownership of productive forces allowed female participation in productive labour and the Party policies.

In the early thirties, the Communist authorities in the Kiangsi Soviet system had legalised freedom of marriage and divorce. When the Party established its headquarters at Yenan, it had a commitment ‘to enhance the political consciousness and cultural level of its women members.’ Chairman Mao said that the revolution needed the support of women to assist the Party in implementing its programme, to increase production and to seek improvement in the living conditions of women.

WOMEN REVOLUTIONARIES AND WOMEN’S FEDERATION

The Chinese women’s movement was begun by a group of women revolutionaries, among whom were Hsiang Ching-yu, a pioneer of the women’s organisations, Yang Kai-hui, a close comrade-at-arms of Chairman Mao, Soong Ching-ling, Honorary President of the National Women’s Federation, Teng Ying-chao, a Vice Chairman of the Federation, and Kang Ke-ching, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and a Vice-chairman of the National Women’s Federation.

During our discussion in Peking, one of the federation members also referred to the story of Shanyana who took part in the revolutionary movement in the early twenties. When her daughter Hsia Chia-hsu (the present deputy minister) was 5 years old, Shanyana’s husband died. Both mother and daughter being women did not have any rights to the property and were driven out of the village by the clan authorities. In spite of life being difficult Shanyana managed to send her daughter to school, and in 1921 she became a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Later both mother and daughter actively participated in the revolution.

To mobilise women, the Party set up a Women’s Department and Hsiang Ching-yu was the first to head this department. She worked in France on a part-time study and work programme and returned to China in 1922. She called on women intellectuals to “go among the women workers and peasants, work for them and learn from them”. She wrote a number of articles on women, emphasising the importance of their role in society. She said that the women’s movement could be linked with the movement for the power to the proletariat. In 1928 Hsiang Ching-yu was arrested by the enemy and sentenced to death by the Kuomintang.

Later the Party organised women’s associations in different parts of the country with worker-peasant women as the core force. For instance, in the liberated areas in the Yenan period, nearly 70% of the women were organised into various women’s associations. In 1937, in the ShensiKansu-Ningshia Border Region the first All-Border Region Congress of Women, which was convened under the sponsorship of the Congress for Peasant Women, represented 30 mass organisations with a membership of 200,000 women from poor and middle-peasant families. Circulars were sent to these women’s organisations in the Border Region I by the Congress, requesting them to send

delegates to participate in the preparatory work to establish a Border Region federation fro women. The main purpose of such organisations was to reorganise women from all walks of life in the entire Border Region for the united front policy, and to participate in the War of Resistance against Japan, as well as to seek improvement in women’s living. After six months of preparatory work, the Border Region Women’s Federation was formally set up on the International Women’s Day, March 8, 1938.

Membership was available to women 13 years and older who maintained an anti-Japanese attitude and agreed to abide by the federation rules. The organisation was based on the principle of democratic centralism and a hierarchal structure along region-ay, county, district, township and village lines. The Border Region Congress was the highest organ of authority of the women’s federations. During the recess of the congress, all the work and responsibility of the federation was placed under the leadership of an executive committee. The executive committee was elected by the congress, as in other mass organisations. Under the executive committee there was a secretariate and three departments: organisation, propaganda and work education, and wartime work. The three-member inspection team regularly visited the local women’s federations to investigate their general progress and to provide them with guidelines for future work.

The First National Congress of Chinese Women in early 1949 in Peking founded the All China Democratic Women’s Federation. The Federation held congresses in 1949, 1953 and 1957. At the 1957 Congress, the name was changed to the National Women’s Federation. The Fourth National Women’s Congress was held in Peking from September 8-17, 1978. The Congress was attended by nearly 2,000 delegates from all over China.

Since 1949, the women’s federations have been set up at various levels, and their organisational structure is similar to that of the Yenan period. The national, provincial, county and commune (or the Neighbourhood Committees in cities) divisions each has a congress of representatives and an executive committee. At the brigade level, there is the brigade congress, popularly known as the brigade section of women’s affairs. During my visit to Shao-shan Production Brigade, I was told that in the women’s affairs, they discussed the following three aspects:

Political study: They received guidelines from

the Party branch committee and studied Mao’s writings, sacrifices of his family and documents published in newspapers. Thrice a month, meetings were held in the evenings or sometimes in the afternoons. Current subjects were chosen for discussion but emphasis was placed on ideological work. Meetings were held less frequently during sowing and harvesting seasons.

Productive work: Work was distributed amongst the women in busy farming seasons. The women were encouraged to do ploughing and other heavy work suet” as carrying rice bags and fertilizers. They stressed Chairman Mao’s policy on productive labour for women.

Family Planning: Nowadays after a woman has had two children, she is persuaded to practice family planning. But some husbands do not approve of their wives’ interest in the planning of the family.

The Women’s Federation, in general, works to encourage all its members to change their social and economic identity by leaving the confines of their homes to work in productive labour alongside men. I was told that the primary tasks of the Women’s Federation centred on raising literacy and political consciousness among the members; mobilising of women to support the Party leadership and its policies; increasing the participation of women in productive labour in order to increase production in general and to improve their social position; and protecting the rights of women.*

Prior to 1959, there were 800 ‘joy houses’ in Shanghai and 200 in Peking, in which several thousands of women served as prostitutes. The Women’s Federation took up the cause of these socially handicapped women and within a period of a few years, the women were rehabilitated, trained in productive work.

* During the Fourth National Women’s Congress in September 1978, Kang Ke-ching stressed the role of women’s organisations and suggested that full-time cadres should be appointed for women’s work. She emphatically pointed out that the “women’s organisations must be properly built and their role as the link between the Party and women be given full play. She also indicated the need for competent full-time cadres engaged in women’s work. “It is necessary to train not only a “large contingent of women cadres armed with theory, but also a large contingent of cadres who are able to take up the practical work in the women’s movement.” (Peking Review, No. 39 September 29, 1978)

THE CHANGED POSITION OF CHINESE WOMEN SINCE 1949

Since 1949, the role of women in the Chinese society has been completely changed. There are now women in all trades and professions, many of them are labour heroines, oil-drillers, pilots, bridge-builders and high-tension-power-line workers. The rights of women to social, political and economic equality with men have been formally proclaimed. Party propaganda materials have described many ‘Iron Girls’ teams who are engaged in unorthodox roles in agriculture and industry. Of the 3,497 Deities of the Fifth National People’s Congress and the 1,510 delegates to the 11^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, women made up 21.2 to 19 per cent respectively.

Women in today’s China can be seen working side by side with men,, and seemingly on equal footing. Women’s position appeared to me much better than in any part of South and South-East Asia, the United States and many other countries in the Western world. One finds them working in all walks of life,’ irrespective of day or night shift jobs. In Peking and Shanghai 90% of the able-bodied women participate in productive labour. They have legal and political rights now. Unlike in the past, they all take part in the management of state affairs, more so at the grass-root level. For instance, in the Revolutionary Committee in all 18 districts of Peking, there are several women members including some holding leading positions. In the ministries of foreign affairs, light industry and communications, there are 12 leading women members including deputy ministers.

The emancipation of women had been greatly promoted by the enforcement of the Marriage Law of 1950, which guaranteed the equality of sexes in marriage and prohibited polygamy, concubinage, child betrothal and the exaction of money or gifts in connection with marriage. There is free mixing of boys and girls. One does not find anyone aware of his or her sex role in a work situation. There is no sexuality stressed in any form- dress, talks, jokes, advertisements, etc. This is their progress compared to their bound-feet mothers and grandmothers. The new generation of women, born and brought up in revolutionary China, is not trained for house work alone or to play the exclusive roles of mothers and wives.

The fundamental reason for the improved position of Chinese women is the change in the ownership of productive forces. The system of state and collective

ownership of productive forces gave employment opportunities to women. For example, today out of the 800,000 able-bodied women workers of Peking, 300,000 are employed in the state-owned factories; 150,000 work in the collective-owned factories; 150,000 work in field of education, sciences and technology, health care and physical culture; 120,000 are in the departmental stores and canteens; and the rest of the women workers are organised as part-time workers in the factories run by the Neighbourhood Committees.

The Shanghai Federation members pointed out: In the Shanghai shipyard, prior to liberation only one woman worker was employed, but today there are 1,000 women working there. In 1949 there were 180,000 women workers in the city, most of them oppressed as cheap labourers under imperialist employers. The total women’s work force in the city today is 1,700, 000. They are engaged in various professions such as teaching, medicine, departmental stores and light industries. In certain industries like iron, steel, ship-building, etc. only 20 per cent of the workers are women. These industries require heavy work and muscular ability, which may damage women’s health, hence men are considered more suitable for these kinds of heavy labour.

Women in China constitute 40 per cent of the labour force at the national level today. It was repeatedly emphasised during my discussion with the members of the Women’s Federations in several places, that the idea which controls women’s liberation movement in China is that women are oppressed primarily because they are cut off from productive labour; in other words, women can gain liberation only through participation in productive work. The Party has repeatedly stressed that “women must stop looking on economic work as unimportant”. In 1948 the Central Committee directives included, “In the First place women must not only be given equal economic rights and positions with men, and in the countryside get and keep an equal share of land and property, but above all, they must be made to understand fully the importance of labour and must look on it as glorious.

To my query of the housewife-oriented campaigns in the mid-fifties, when women were urged “to do productive labour and run the home thriftily,” the federation members told me that “it was because of the Liu-Shao-chi’s line” which slackened the efforts of the Party to get women to the fields and factor

ies. This was, however, a short-lived aberration, the campaigns glorifying the role of housewife were attacked during the Cultural Revolution.

Women’s movement entered a new stage in China during the Great Leap Forward of 1958, when millions housewives stepped out of their homes to work the farms and industries run by the rural peoples; communes and the neighbourhood committees. For instance, in 1958, 60,000 women workers were recruited in Peking, out of which 4,800 were recruited in the handicraft industries to be run by neighbourhood committees. The women’s federations throughout the country, organised part-time and night schools to encourage women to educate themselves, realise their potential and take part in productive labour.

The present position of women in China has been attained after a long hard struggle. Initially, women faced a lot of resistance in getting the factories and other organisations to accept them as workers. It was wrongly assumed, for example, that a man worker could handle the job of three women workers”. At that time, women too lacked self confidence and were affected by Confucian culture and feudal conditions.

Party and the Government have shown great con-n in freeing the Chinese women to participate productive labour. The socialisation and moderation of household chores is considered an important aspect of developing supportive work. There a comprehensive range of supportive services such public canteens, bakeries, laundries, tailoring shops, nurseries and kindergartens to reduce the burden in household and child care. In the factories, the trade unions have several women representatives who look after the interest of female employees. Women workers are entitled to several kinds of leave, viz.

a) rest for two days and lighter work during menstruation;

b) from the 7th month of pregnancy working hours are reduced by one hour daily;

c) maternity leave of 56 days with full pay. In case of difficult delivery, the leave is extended to 70 days;

d) nursing mothers can take two to three 30-minute periods off to feed their babies during working time;

e) during menopause, women are given light work and some rest periods. This is a very recent introduction and found only in some factories.

Most factories have hospitals and day care centres. The factory hospital provides facilities for its women workers to undergo a free medical check up once a year, and family planning is propagated by the medical workers. Women can put their babies after 56 days up to one year in a day care centre run by the factory. After one year, they can put their babies in kindergartens. In Peking there are 6,000 kindergarten schools with 280,000 children. (Before liberation there were only 11 with 300 children.) The bus, run by the kindergarten, picks up the child every Monday morning from the parents’ home, and delivers the child back on Saturday evening. These are inexpensive facilities and cost only 50 to 70 cents per month. The other charges are subsidized by the factories or the organisations

The retirement age for women industrial workers is 50; men retire at the age of 60 and intellectual and professional women (mental workers) when they reach 55. After retirement, they receive 70-85% of their wages as a pension. Workers and retired persons enjoy the same welfare and their family members are entitled to get semi-free health care facilities.

There are night schools for both men and women workers in the factories. Political study groups are held at regular intervals for ideological purposes. During these meetings they are also reminded of their ‘bitter past’ in the Confucian society and their improved status in the present society. Emancipation of women is connected with the liberation of the entire society. In the countryside, ‘political night meetings’ are organised generally two to three times in a month. The federation members referred me to the system in Tachai, “When men go to attend these meetings, women take care of the children and household work, when the women attend the meetings, it is the men who look after the children and household work.”

All this signifies profound change in the position of women in China. The question is: Is women’s liberation complete in China? One still finds many manifestations of male prejudice, and the surviving feudal influences on the existing family life. For instance, women are expected to give more of their energies to problems of home and family. One also notices sexual division of jobs in the countryside and concentration of women in certain types of jobs, distribution of unequal work points for men arid women and the failure to train women cadres in proper

numbers. A systematic elimination of the Confucian feudal remnants is the challenge to Chinese women.

THE CHALLENGE TO CHINESE WOMEN

During my meetings with the leading members of Women’s Federation in Peking, Shanghai and Canton, I remarked that although Chinese women had achieved great success in all walks of life, yet they still had a long way to go to be on par with men. I gave two examples to stress my point: First of all, women earn less work points than men dol on an average 10 for men and 8 for women for a day’s work. Even at Tachai, where the type of work was not such a factor in determining work points, men earned 10 points and women only 8.5. This was because physical strength and amount of work still counted in the criteria used. Secondly, women concentrate on lower levels and only certain types of jobs. For instance, there were many women doctors but rarely any of them were surgeons and many women nurses and hardly any male nurses in the hospitals I visited. The kindergartens were all organised by women. In the primary and middle schools one finds a larger number of women but this is not so in the universities. Women are primarily employed in the textile mills, and in some heavy industries, there are very few women.

A few of the federation members talked of the psychological reasons for women’s concentration in certain types of jobs and referred to the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’ in China. They also gave me the example of the number 3 Textile Mill in Peking where 60 per cent of the workers were women, and some were also on the management level, including some deputy directors. Interestingly enough, a great majority of the federation members agreed with my observations and even said, “we have a long way to go in achieving social and economic parity with men”. They explicitly pointed out the three major problem areas.

First, “women are excluded from heavy work in certain industries”. But if machines could take care of the heavy work, then women would be treated equally with men. In the fields, men earned more work points because of their physical strength. But, they hoped, that with the development of science and technology and automisation of heavy labour, men and women would be considered equal and physical strength would not be considered the criterion for earning more work points.

In support of this argument, they showed me

two articles which the People’s Daily had carried on 30 April 1978. The article emphasised the importance of the socialisation and modernisation of household chores. The article quoted Mao, saying “When women will master technology and acquire skills for productive work, they will give a full play to their intelligence and thereby enhance their role in society.”

The second problem was the fact that housework was not being socialised and modernised enough. Although in the past, the mass media had urged men to assist their wives with household chores, it is only in the cities that men do share some housework. In the countryside, “men do not share any housework.” To make housework easy and to enable women to devote more time to productive labour, it was necessary to have more supportive services such as nurseries, kindergartens, schools, stores, public canteens, laundries and also use of machinery for household chores, particularly in the countryside.

The 56-day maternity leave with full pay was available only to women workers in the urban areas. Generally there was no maternity leave in the countryside. The system of a 42-day maternity leave with full pay or work points existed only in a few communes in the suburbs of Peking, Shanghai, Canton and other big cities in China. I was given the example of this arrangement in the counties of Tingshien, Pingku and Tahsien near Peking as well Shihching People’s Commune and Puyin Production Brigade in the Tanpu People’s Commune in Huahsien county, Kwantung Province. If a woman in the countryside did not work, she earned nothing. It is a different thing that she might get subsidy or some other concession for childbirth or illness.

When I made some points about infant rearing leave for men in Sweden, some of the leading women appreciated the idea, and remarked, “Every society has its own way of doing things, and others can learn from them.” I also proposed the idea to consider child-bearing and rearing as a contribution by the women to human resources. The leading members seemed to agree with the idea, which, if officially accepted would further improve the status of women in society.

The last of the problem areas was that the Women’s Federation had to educate men and women to eliminate traditional influences and develop self-confidence in women. They said, “We have a long history of feudal, imperialist rule. Women were

lowest in the traditional society. Some of the traditional influences concerning women still continue.” Thus there were historical reasons for insufficient representation of women in leading political and adminstrative organisations. Men have for a long time secured training in all kinds of work, and women on the other hand did not feel confident enough to perform the jobs. They emphatically pointed out the necessity for raising the scientific and cultural level of women, training skilled women managers who know how to run modern industry, and women designers, engineers as well as medical workers.

Women in China have already made a beginning in this direction. Women’s Federation and women leading cadres organise political study groups in communes, factories and in neighbourhood committees to make housewives aware of the fact that they must take part in social productive work. In April, May 1978, when I was in China, 20 women in the Friendship Department Store in Peking had organised such study groups. In these study groups, they advocated that “taking part in social productive work is a fundamental condition for women’s liberation”; they also criticised the remnants of Confucianism in society which considered men superior and women inferior. Another example was that of some women leading cadres who went to the communes to see that there were no unfair practices concerning women. In 1974 the Peking Women’s Federation after a careful study and investigation protested against wage discrimination in Pingku County. Since then men and women received equal work points for a day’s work instead of women only 8 for doing the same labour.

On the 9th of September, 1978, on behalf of the Third Executive Committee of the National Women’s Federation, Kang Ke0ching demanded: “The Party’s various policies must be conscientiously implemented on the production front; the principle of to each according to his work, with more pay for more work, must be firmly upheld; women must receive the same pay as men for equal work; and proper attention must be paid to the conditions peculiar to women so that allowance is made for menstruation, pregnancies, maternity leave and time needed for breast-feeding their infants. We must protect working women and enable them to keep up their high enthusiasm for production.” (Peking Review, No. 39, Sept. 29/78).