Asian Studies

The Cultural Revolution in China was aimed at achieving a complete transformation of contemporary culture in China, including the role of the genders. At the center of the revolution was Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party and renowned revolutionist, political theorist and military strategist. Before the revolution, women were subjected to a lot of gender-based violence including infanticide, rape, being forced to marry a chosen spouse and being denied divorce from abusive marriages (Croll 21). In this essay, I discuss the improvements in the rights of women as a result of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, paying special attention to infanticide of female fetuses (pregnancies going to bear girl children were often terminated through abortion) and the scrapping of arranged marriages and wanton spousal abuse as well as education and work privileges.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the stereotyping of women as a weaker gender was deliberately broken. Mao Zedong did not begin to champion for equality of women after ascending to the helm of the Communist Republic of China he was known to compose glorious poems about women in military attire much earlier than this (Croll 22). Through this revolution, the communist government, following the doctrines of Mao Zedong now collectively referred to as Maoism, put in place, amid pressure from modern day Chinese feminists, elaborate mechanisms acknowledging the challenge that women were not indeed inferior (Tsou 41). With women now claiming positions in well-paying employment opportunities, there was no need to abort female fetuses any more (Abrey 41).

According to the Confucian doctrine existing before the revolution, women were supposed to be despised while men were to be respected (Barlow 14). Even women from the wealthiest families were denied the right to education and subordinated to their male counterparts not only in their families but also in the society (Barlow 14). With changes occurring in the course of the revolution, the brutal customary marriage system in which young girls and women in general were forced to marry people they did not even know was done away with (Croll 26). Empowered women were not economically over-dependent on men anymore girls could no longer be forced to marry and the rampant raping orchestrated by landlords and husbands on their women was no more.

The victory of the Chinese Cultural Revolution ushered in a brand new era for all women in China. Tens of millions of women could now own land after womens activist groups had urged all women in China to rise up and stand up to challenge the existent social dispensation which allowed oppressive landlords to mistreat them with impunity (Tsou 51).

In the year 1950, the Marriage Law was passed in the Peoples Communist Republic of China that legally prohibited the marriage of women by force, marrying off of young girls, the payment of bride price, domestic and social violence against women and granted women the right to divorce (Ebrey 61). These radical changes in the social order no doubt ran into a lot of resistance from male peasants who had gotten used to mistreating their wives and claiming bride price for their young daughters. Landlords, workers and even some leaders of the Chinese Communist Party also resisted these changes but the top brass of the party under Mao Zedong launched a massive campaign starting from the year 1953 aimed towards the implementation of the Marriage Law (Croll 53). Despite these campaigns, little progress was achieved in the rural areas where violence and discrimination based on gender still remained sort of a norm. For example, rural folk still paid hefty bride prices for young girls and therefore remained very reluctant to grant divorce even when it was very necessary.

Between the years 1958 and 1959, the Great Leap Forward saw millions of Chinese women emerge from their home-making roles and gender slavery into the mainstream labor market (Tsou 75). Networks institutions offering basic education to women sprouted in the peoples communes, equipping women with the knowledge they needed to work in agricultural communal agricultural fields as well as in construction sites (Tsou 77). The system was establishing localized womens associations which supported women in getting high paying jobs and it did not take long for women to ascent to the leadership of their production teams and later to qualify for recruitment to the Chinese Communist Party.

Mao Zedong and the rest of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party continued to encourage an overhaul of traditional perception regarding the genders which viewed women as inferior with the hope that such a move would instigate conflict between the classes, hence paving way for the strengthening of the party and consequently the entire country, under communist ideals (Croll 59). A decade after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, women in china had gained momentous steps towards equality as a result of the socialist transformation instigated by the communist party. Mao Zedong believed that for women to attain the same social and economic status as men and hence to end their oppression, the key strategy was to entrench them into the labor force (Tsou 83).

Luckily, the structure of the Chinese family unit retained its structure particularly in the rural communes remained intact, structured as it had been for thousands of years. Women still performed most of the domestic chores, but the difference was that the girls had the same chance as the boys (Tsou 91). Equality had eliminated the practice of girls being barred from attending school or being married off at an early age for bride prices. Gender based violence acts orchestrated against women by their husbands, employers and landlords were now illegal and women played more or less the same role they play today working an official shift before retiring to their homes to take care of their families (Ebrey 49).

The Chinese Cultural Revolution, with its classless thrust and a deliberated emphasis on the role political, economic and social ideology should play as argued by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party provided a very conducive environment for the society in general and women in particular to challenge male supremacy that had been touted as a norm for centuries (Ebrey 52) . Chinese women, especially young women, were drawn into active participation in the political process in ways that could not be perceived and had never been seen before in the history of the nation. No longer under the risk of being aborted before they are born and unaffected by the risk of being married off to oppressive husbands, girls could now challenge teachers, parents and even those in political authority backed by official policy formulated by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (Tsou 95). Mao is quoted off-record as having said that Women hold half of the sky and he believed that any feat a man could accomplish, a woman also could (Tsou 92). Girls could even receive military training and join the Peoples militia after graduating.