‘Women’s Liberation’ and the Early CCP

It may have been expected that the early CCP, inspired in part as it was by the May Fourth Movement, would be interested in the liberation of women. That movement was animated by anarchist theory and the anti-marriage ideal of ‘free love’. Marriage was considered an anachronism and exploitative of women per se. Concubinage and foot binding were also anathema to the movement. The CCP, however, was in fact a more traditionalist and conservative strand of the movement in some ways, hence its relative success, in fact, in conservative and rural areas. Marxism was not then a feminist theory in the way anarchism had already become.

Nevertheless, the CCP did have an eye toward some modernisation of the patriarchy as it clearly was a progressive party. They did ban practices such as concubinage and foot binding as I’ve mentioned (on the basis that they were considered feudal in their tenor).

From the Jiangxi period the CCP had also banned dowries in areas they controlled so marriage had become ‘free’ at least in that sense but this was intended to benefit poor males as much as anything. It was a practical measure to promote the contentedness of poor males with the party and indeed Mao viewed it mainly as a measure for recruiting males.

At the same time, however, the CCP made divorce easier especially for women which at least potentially benefited them more directly as a group. Nevertheless when large numbers of women in unhappy situations took up this opportunity for divorce it is indicative of the CCP’s focus on the happiness of men (especially soldiers), that when unhappily divorced soldiers began to be noticed by the party this led to the law being amended to again make it relatively difficult for women to obtain divorces from soldiers in particular.

As part of its later ‘new democracy’ policy, the CCP confirmed the amendment and that ‘family harmony’ was a higher order priority for the CCP than women’s emancipation and equality. This tactic of thus backsliding and pandering to poor males and the patriarchate may have been necessary to enable Mao to eventually overcome the GMD forces.

Finally once the CCP had come to power and formed the PRC it introduced the 1950 Marriage law. This replaced the ‘feudal family’ with the ‘new democratic family’, reaffirmed the nuclear family as the basic unit of socialist society and favoured mediation (and as I’ve said ‘family harmony’) over easy divorce. It was puritan in its assertion of the moral order required for the socialist project and marriage and family arrangements most favoured by the poor male peasant. The party considered that a high divorce rate would be potentially too stressful in its impact on the all-important productivity.

In 1949 the party had founded a Women’s Federation as an official state-sponsored ‘mass organisation’. It was supposed to represent the interests of women but instead it really functioned more as a mobiliser of women to contribute to the pre-determined economic goals of the state. It was really about dissemination of socialism and socialist goals among women that may have in fact extended patriarchy rather than about listening to them about inequality. For example on one occasion when there was a high unemployment rate among men in some areas it encouraged women not to work in those areas in order that men might find more work there. Demands for equality were formally subordinated to the alleged larger aims of socialist construction and social stability. You may remember me noting in earlier posts such calls for subordination were also contained in standard memes coming out of the Arab world of the later 20^th Century.

Changes to this parlous state of women’s liberation would have to wait until at least the Cultural Revolution.