The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in China in 1921, growing quickly to eventually establish the People's Republic of China under the rule of ChairmanMao Zedong in 1949. As a Marxist–Leninist
party, the Chinese Communist Party is theoretically committed to female
equality, and has vowed to place women's liberation on their agenda.
Early 1900s
Female students participate in demonstration as part of the 1919 May Fourth Movement.
In the 1910s and 1920s, the May Fourth Movement
advocated for more equality between women and men, more educational
opportunities for women, and female emancipation. This era was more open
and accommodating to feminism than the eras that followed it.
The movement, however, only affected a small number of elite women who
lived in urban areas and its impact on most women who lived in rural
areas of China was minimal. Arranged marriages
were common at time time. The only way that women could initiate a
divorce was by suicide, whereas men could choose divorce for various
reasons.
By the 1920s, the Communist movement in China used a labor and
peasant organizing strategy that combined workplace advocacy with
women's rights advocacy.
The Communists would lead union organizing efforts among male workers
while simultaneously working in nearby peasant communities on women's
rights issues, including literacy for women. Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui were among the most effective Communist political organizers using this method. Poor peasant women, in particular, became strong supporters of CCP programs.
During the Chinese Civil War, the CCP enacted women's rights measures in areas of the country they controlled. Orders issued by the Red Army's soviet
governments advanced the freedom to divorce and marry, liberating women
from feudal marriages and resulting in women's strong support for the
revolution. In the revolutionary base area of Jiangxi,
the Communist-led authorities enacted the Marriage Regulations of 1931
and the Marriage Laws of 1941, which were modeled after Soviet Union
statutes.
These statutes declared marriage as a free association between a woman
and a man without the interference of other parties and permitted
divorce on mutual agreement.
At the time, they were the most progressive marriage laws in China and
created the conditions for women to divorce men they had been forced to
marry, leave abusive spouses, and till their own land.
Also during the Civil War, rural women were at the forefront of
providing care to the dependents of men who fought in the Red Army,
particularly through Women's Associations.
Land reform movement
During China's land reform movement (which began after the defeat of the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War
and continued in the early years of the People's Republic of China),
the CCP encouraged rural women in achieving a "double fanshen" - a
revolutionary transformation as both a peasant and a feminist awakening
as a woman. The Party urged rural women to reject traditional Chinese assumptions about their role in society. In conjunction with land reform, the movement promoted women's issues such as the elimination of bride prices and reversing the stigma against widows remarrying. The Party promoted successes in women's liberation, such as the progress of the Hui women of northwest China
who were said to have not just received land through the rural
movement, but also "freedom over their own bodies" and embraced
political participation. The Party also publicized reports of individual women activists, such as Guo Suzhen, a Liaoning woman who was first mobilized during a 1947 mass mobilization campaign.
Mao era (1949–1976)
After the Chinese Communist Revolution
in 1949, dramatic changes began to be put in place to guarantee
equality between men and women. Professor Lin Chun writes, "Women's
liberation had been highlighted in the communist agenda from the outset
and, in that sense, the Chinese revolution was simultaneously a women's
revolution, and Chinese socialism a women's cause."
After the founding of the PRC in 1949, newly-established local
governments continued to prioritize women's political mobilization.
The famous quote from Mao Zedong, reported to have been uttered in
1968, reflects the commitment of the new government of the People's
Republic of China: "Women hold up half the sky".
In the 1950s, high-level female CCP cadre
had a significant role in advocating for greater access to abortion and
sterilization surgeries -- in their view, women could not "hold up half
the sky" nor advance their revolutionary work if they had too many
children. Women workers on the mobile film projection teams which brought cinema to rural China were promoted as model workers and symbols of advancing gender equality.
A marriage certificate from 1970 after the Marriage Law was put into place that states the couple is marrying voluntarily.
Legislation
In 1950, the Chinese Communist Party adopted two pieces of legislative law to help bring about gender equality. First, the Marriage Law
outlawed prostitution, arranged marriage, child betrothal, and
concubinage. Free marriage and divorce were heavily advocated by the
government, along with economic independence for women. Second, the Land
Law attempted to mobilize women to participate in the labor force by
relocating them from rural to urban areas. A concentration of
female-oriented labor occurred in the production of textile, silk, and
other light industries.
Response to legislation
In
1953, the government realized that the Marriage and Land Law had
received large pushback from male members of society. The economy could
also no longer handle the large amount of the labor force that it had
mobilized. Murder and suicide rates among women who wished to terminate
their marriage also reached a new high. For the next few years, the CCP
focused more on overall societal stability and emphasized more domestic
values for women to support a peaceful home life.
Land reform movement
Rural women had a significant impact on China's land reform movement, with the CCP making specific efforts to mobilize them for agrarian revolution.
Party activists observed that because peasant women were less tied to
old power structures, they more readily opposed those identified as
class enemies. In 1947, Deng Yingchao emphasized at a land reform policy meeting that "women function as great mobilizers when they speak bitterness." The All-China Women's Federation issued a call to Party activists to encourage peasant women to understand their "special bitterness" from a class perspective.
Women activists helped peasant women prepare to speak in public,
including by roleplaying as landlords to help such women practice.
The Great Leap Forward
In the late 1950s, Shanghai established neighborhood committees to promote women's literacy, birth planning, and women's employment. Workers from these neighborhood committees went door-to-door to address individual concerns about birth control. This method was adopted in other cities by the early 1960s and expanded to the establishment of local birth planning offices.
The Great Leap Forward's focus on total workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor advancement. As women became increasingly needed to work in agriculture and industry, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of Iron Women arose.Women did traditionally male work in both fields and factories, including major movements of women into management positions. Women competed for high productivity, and those who distinguished themselves came to be called Iron Women.
Slogans such as "There is no difference between men and women in this
new age," and "We can do anything, and anything we do, we can do it
well," became popular.
Despite that Great Leap Forward Movement ultimately resulted in a
devastating famine, it paved the way for women's labor force
participation during the Cultural Revolution period.
The Cultural Revolution
Depiction of women as soldiers during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution
period beginning in 1966 brought prosperous economic development as
women's labor force participation remained high. Further, women's
representation in higher educational settings was also higher compared
to previous and future time periods. However, women still suffered a
lower status in Chinese culture. During this time, the All Women's
Federation was also forced to suspend itself, an indication that female
priorities were considered less important on the political agenda.
During the Cultural Revolution, one way China promoted its policy of state feminism was through revolutionary operas developed by Mao's wife Jiang Qing. Most of the eight model dramas in this period featured women as their main characters. The narratives of these women protagonists begin with them oppressed by misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of their own internal strength and the CCP.
The extremely leftist Cultural Revolution Movement often ignored
women's issues, and considered them no different from men without
considering their lower status. Women were often depicted as strong capable warriors who fought in the name of Communism and China in propaganda posters. In many cases during the introduction of the Red Guard,
women felt the need to be a leading force. This resulted in numerous
women at schools being beaten and humiliated by their peers if they did
not live up to Communist standards. Despite being depicted as strong and
proud, unequal treatment for women was still relevant in the 1960s.
Many women who completed their educational requirements were still
assigned poorer jobs while their male counterparts received better
quality jobs.
After the elimination of the assigned work units and the ability to
migrate from the countryside to urban areas became available, many girls
started living outside of the traditional sense that was still
practiced in the rural areas. These girls were later known as the
factory girls due to their work in poor conditioned factories.
Post-Mao period to the 2000s
Following
the 1970s, tremendous success was brought by the reform movements to
China's economic success, however, this success did not equally impact
the status of women. Unequal employment opportunities and income
distribution have become such large issues that the United Nations Development Program has allocated specific funds to aid women who are laid-off from their jobs.
Prostitution has also become an issue, especially in urban areas, as
well as an increasing divorce rate. Women in rural areas are worse off
compared to women in urban areas because of the lack of market economy
present in rural cities.
On the other hand, benefits to women include increased
educational opportunities such as women's studies programs and academic
scholarships. The Center for Women's Studies in China was established at
Zhengzhou University in 1987, along with many other women's programs and research centers.
First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivering a speech at the 1995 United
Nations Conference on Women in Beijing. She notably said: "If there is
one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human
rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and
for all."
In 1995, the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women held in
Beijing marked a turning point for Chinese feminism. This time period in
the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
saw a limit in spontaneously organized activism as ordered by the
Chinese government. Instead, Chinese feminists published numerous
articles in mainstream media, especially in the Women's Federation
newspaper Chinese Women's Daily. Chinese women's non-governmental organizations served as a crucial lever to open social spaces and allow for activism.
Present day
Gender
inequality is still an issue in China in rural areas, despite the
improvement of women's rights during Mao's era. Even in the 21st
century, men have more access to social resources and high socioeconomic
status, due to the existing prevalence of patriarchal values in Chinese
society. The gender gap is wider in rural areas, where one ninth of the
population still lives.
Post-Mao Party leaders such as former CCP general secretary Zhao Ziyang have vigorously opposed the participation of women in the political process. Within the CCP, a glass ceiling still exists that prevents women from rising into the most important positions. In 2022, the Communist Youth League of China declared that "[e]xtreme feminism has become a poisonous tumour on the Internet.
Feminism in China refers to the collection of historical movements and ideologies in time aimed at redefining the role and status. women in China. Feminism in China began in the 20th century in tandem with the Chinese Revolution. Feminism in modern China is closely linked with socialism and class issues. Some commentators believe that this close association is damaging to Chinese feminism and argue that the interests of the party are placed before those of women.
In
1989, seven overseas Chinese scholars formed The Chinese Scholars for
Women's Studies (CSWS), a feminist network that aimed to promote Chinese
women's and gender studies.
In 1994 and 1997, the network translated two western feminist theory
publications into Chinese, and thus provided for the Chinese academic
community the first peer-reviewed translations of the concept of feminism.
In their 1994 collaboration, feminism was translated as Nü Xing Zhu Yi.
In 1997, as most CSWS members began using emails, the network had an
extensive online debate as to whether feminism should not be translated
as Nü Xing Zhu Yi but Nü Quan Zhu Yi.
Feminism as Nü Xing Zhu Yi (女性主义)
Beginning
in the 1980s, native Chinese academics started using Nü Xing Zhu Yi as
the Chinese counterpart of feminism. The emphasis of this translation
is on the first two characters Nü Xing (女性), which coupled with Zhu Yi
(主义) emanates a more academic tone. Nü Xing in its own right also
denotes "women". The term thus appeared fitting to then Chinese
academics whose scholarly focus centered around women's issues instead
of more relational concepts such as "gender" which concerns not only
women but all gender subjects and their relations.
Feminism as Nü Quan Zhu Yi (女权主义)
The
emphasis of translating feminism as Nü Quan Zhu Yi is on the second
character Quan (权), meaning rights in English. The proponents of this
translation highlights the political contingency of feminism as a
rights-based social movement. Some CSWS members supported this
translation because they felt the other candidate Nü Xing Zhu Yi was
depoliticising in its absence of any rights-based connotations. Nü Quan
Zhu Yi, which accentuates human rights, was also less essentialist
and more encompassing as compared with Nü Xing Zhu Yi, whose first two
characters delimit the term as seemingly exclusive to the concerns of
women.
History
Before 1900
The huge change in the status of women in China before the 1900s occurred in the Han dynasty.
In the early matrilineal society, Chinese women had a completely
different social status from that after the Han dynasty, women were able
to retain their surnames and even pass them on to their children. From Han dynasty to Qing dynasty, Chinese women under the patriarchal system were severely oppressed due to the profound influence of Confucianism and filial piety. During this period, literature about women emerged in China, such as "Mother of Mencius", "The Analects of Women",
etc., explaining to women at the time how to be ethical and
popularizing the best way of serving parents, husbands and sons in a
woman's life. Prior to the 20th century, women in China were considered
essentially different from men. Despite the association of women with yin and men with yang, two qualities considered equally important by Daoism, women were believed to occupy a lower position than men in the hierarchical order of the universe. The I Ching
stated that "'Great Righteousness is shown in that man and woman occupy
their correct places; the relative positions of Heaven and Earth.'" Women were to be submissive and obedient to men, and normally not allowed to participate in government, military or community institutions. While there were lauded exceptions in Chinese history and literature, such as the Song dynasty general Liang Hongyu and legendary woman warriorHua Mulan,
these were considered to be signs of the dire situation of China at the
time. Before the 20th century, such exceptional women were believed to
have fought to defend China's traditional patriarchal order and society, not to change it.
20th century
1900-1949
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, China experienced military and political crises at home and abroad. The Opium Wars
of 1839-42 and 1856-60 forced China to open trade to other countries,
which brought foreign ideologies. A large number of political conflicts
forced educated men and women in exile to start revolutionary movements.
They started to speak out against these conditions in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, but to little avail. Before that, influential
Chinese thinkers, such as Liang Qichao
and others, called for the liberation of women, better acceptance of
women's education, and women's participation in the country
construction.
From the perspective of changing the fate of a country, Liang Qichao
claimed that the education of women and the liberation of women are
necessary, and they are also essential to the health of the country.
It was also during these early years of feminism in China that the New Woman
movement emerged in their infancy stage promoting ideas of education
for women, gender equality, and freedom from constrictive Confucian
practices. In the 20th century, women writers also expressed feminism through literary writing. The situation only began to change as result of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. In course of this widespread uprising against the ruling Qing dynasty, several women rebel units were raised such as Wu Shuqing's Women's Revolutionary Army, Yin Weijun and Lin Zongxue's Zhejiang Women's Army, Tang Qunying's Women's Northern Expedition Brigade, and many others. All these units were disbanded by the Provisional Government of the Republic of China on 26 February 1912, mostly for chauvinistic reasons.
Nevertheless, the fact that they had fought alongside men encouraged
many of the women who had taken part in the women militias to become
politically active, striving for change.
Many changes in women's lives took place during the Republic of China (1912–1949). In 1912 the Women's Suffrage Alliance,
an umbrella organization of many local women's organizations, was
founded to work for the inclusion of women's equal rights and suffrage
in the constitution of the new republic after the abolition of the
monarchy, and while the effort was not successful, it signified an
important period of feminism activism.
A generation of educated and professional new women emerged after the inclusion of girls in the state school system and after women students were accted at the University of Beijing
in 1920, and in the 1931 Civil Code, women were given equal inheritance
rights, banned forced marriage and gave women the right to control
their own money and initiate divorce.
No nationally unified women's movement could organize until China was unified under the Kuomintang
Government in Nanjing in 1928; women's suffrage was finally included in
the new Constitution of 1936, although the constitution was not
implemented until 1947.
In 1922, birth control activist Margaret Sanger traveled to China. Her visit fueled the belief among elites in Nationalist-era China that the use of contraception would improve the "quality" of the Chinese people and resulted in many newspaper articles addressing the benefits and shortcomings of birth control.
Chinese feminists inspired by Sanger's visit went on to be
significantly involved in the subsequent Chinese debates on birth
control and eugenics.
In Republican-era China, Chinese feminists did not universally demand legalization of abortion in China.
In the view of some feminists, social conservatives' powerful
opposition to abortion de-criminalization would result in a backlash
that would harm other efforts to improve women's status in relation to
men. Accordingly, in a tactical bid for broader support, many feminist organizations pursued moderate abortion positions.
1949-2000
In
the Communist movement, "Women's liberation had been highlighted in the
communist agenda from the outset, and, in that sense, the Chinese
revolution was simultaneously a women's revolution, and Chinese
socialism a women's cause."
By the 1920s, the Communist movement in China used a labor and peasant
organizing strategy that combined workplace advocacy with women's rights
advocacy.
The Communists would lead union organizing efforts among male workers
while simultaneously working in nearby peasant communities on women's
rights issues, including literacy for women. Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui were among the most effective Communist political organizers using this method.
During the Chinese Civil War, the Communists enacted women's rights measures in areas of the country they controlled. In the revolutionary base area of Jiangxi,
the Communist-led authorities enacted the Marriage Regulations of 1931
and the Marriage Laws of 1941, which were modeled after Soviet Union
statutes.
These statutes declared marriage as a free association between a woman
and a man without the interference of other parties and permitted
divorce on mutual agreement.
At the time, they were the most progressive marriage laws in China and
created the conditions for women to divorce men they had been forced to
marry, leave abusive spouses, and till their own land.
In 1942, Ding Ling used International Women's Day
to point out the hypocritical attitudes and behaviors of male
communists and solved the special pressure on female revolutionaries.
She claims that marriage still promotes the husband's control of his
wife. However, because the pressure of marriage becomes unbearable,
women will get married eventually.
During China's land reform movement (which began after the defeat of the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War
and continued in the early years of the People's Republic of China),
the Communist Party encouraged rural women in achieving a "double
fanshen" - a revolutionary transformation as both a peasant and a
feminist awakening as a woman. The Party urged rural women to reject traditional Chinese assumptions about their role in society.
In conjunction with land reform, the movement promoted women's issues
such as the elimination of bride prices and reversing the stigma against
widows remarrying. The Party promoted successes in women's liberation, such as the progress of the Hui women of northwest China
who were said to have not just received land through the rural
movement, but also "freedom over their own bodies" and embraced
political participation.
The revolt of women has shaken China to its very depths.... In the
women of China, the Communists possessed, almost ready-made, one of the
greatest masses of disinherited human beings the world has ever seen.
And because they found the keys to the heart of these women, they also
found one of the keys to victory...
J. Belden, 1946
The Great Leap Forward's focus on total workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor advancement. As women became increasingly needed to work in agriculture and industry, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of Iron Women arose. Women did traditionally male work in both fields and factories, including major movements of women into management positions. Women competed for high productivity, and those who distinguished themselves came to be called Iron Women.
Slogans such as "There is no difference between men and women in this
new age," and "We can do anything, and anything we do, we can do it
well," became popular during the Great Leap Forward.
During the Cultural Revolution, one way China promoted its policy of state feminism was through revolutionary opera. Most of the eight model dramas in this period featured women as their main characters. The narratives of these women protagonists begin with them oppressed by misogyny,
class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through
the discovery of their own internal strength and the Communist Party.
As a result of government approval following the Communist Revolution,
women's rights groups became increasingly active in China: "One of the
most striking manifestations of social change and awakening which has
accompanied the Revolution in China has been the emergence of a vigorous
and active Woman's Movement."
Beginning in the 70s and continuing in the 80s, however, many
Chinese feminists began arguing that the Communist government had been
"consistently willing to treat women's liberation as something to be
achieved later, after class inequalities had been taken care of."
Some feminists claim that part of the problem is a tendency on the
government's part to interpret "equality" as sameness, and then to treat
women according to an unexamined standard of male normalcy.
21st century
Hillary Clinton Addresses the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women at the Beijing International Conference Center in Beijing, ChinaChinese Feminist Women's March New York
In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women was convened in Beijing. This is the first United Nations conference held in China. In a show of hospitality, then Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretaryJiang Zemin announced at the opening ceremony that "men-women equality is a basic national policy".
The phrasing became the political cornerstone of all post-1995 gender
and women's development policy directory published by China's State Council and the Women's Federation. Along with the Conference, a parallel forum of NGO panel was held in the Huairou district in Beijing. The concept of Non-Government Organization
(NGO) was thus introduced into China, giving rise to many feminist
alliances in 21st century China, such as the Beijing Zhongze Legal
Consulting Service Center led by Guo Jianmei,
the Henan Shequ Educational Research Center, and the Anti-Domestic
Violence Network which spearheaded the 20-year long campaign of enacting
anti-domestic violence law, etc. The 1995 Conference also prompted the CCP to reform relevant government structures responsible for China's gender development. The National Working Committee on Children and Women (NWCCW) was established in anticipation of the Conference in 1993. The Women's Federation, which was technically a People's Organization pre-1995, was orally pronounced by the Beijing government at the Conference as a Non-Governmental Organization. The 1995 UN Conference also introduced concepts such as gender mainstreaming and domestic violence into China.
In 2001, China amended its marriage law, so that abuse was considered grounds for divorce. The law was deliberated via an open revision process which included input from feminist academics and women lawyers. Other civil and criminal laws were also amended to better protect women's rights and interests, including the inheritance law.
In 2005, China added new provisions to the Law on Women's Right Protection to include sexual harassment. In 2006 "The Shanghai Supplement" was drafted to help further define sexual harassment in China.
In 2013, the first woman to bring a gender discrimination lawsuit
in China, a 23-year-old who went by the pseudonym of Cao Ju, won a
small settlement of 30,000 yuan and an official apology from the Juren Academy.
In 2015, China enacted its first nationwide law prohibiting domestic violence, although it excluded same-sex couples and did not address sexual violence. The law also defined domestic violence for the first time.
Domestic violence had become a subject of much public debate in China
in 2011, when Kim Lee posted pictures of her bruised face on Chinese
social media and accused her husband Li Yang of domestic violence. She later stated in the New York Times
that police had told her no crime had happened; Li admitted beating her
but criticized her for discussing private things in public.
In 2017, the Sina Weibo
account of Feminist Voices (Nuquan Zhisheng, 女权之声), an important
feminist organization in China, was suspended for thirty days after they
posted an article about the planned women's strike in the United States
on March 8 (International Women's Day). In March 2018 the account was deleted.
In 2018, Xixi Luo from Beihang University
published an online accuse on Sina Weibo to her former PhD professor
Xiaowu Chen, claiming she has been sexually harassed during her time at
the university. Luo's statement went viral on Weibo, and was seen as China's first widely shared #MeToo moment.
Following Luo's brave move, other Chinese university students came
forward on Chinese social media with allegations against their former
supervisors.
As more and more sexual harassment cases being exposed in the public
discourse, students and alumni from more than 70 universities jointly
signed a letter advocating for proper legislation on protecting sexual
harassment in colleges and universities.
In 2020, the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China
introduced a mandatory "cooling-off period" for divorce filings, as
specified in Article 1077. This provision came into effect on January 1,
2021. According to the article, either spouse can withdraw the divorce
application within 30 days of filing with the marriage registration
authority, if they have a change of heart during this cooling-off
period. Furthermore, if neither spouse applies for a divorce certificate
in person within 30 days after the cooling-off period ends, the divorce
application is automatically considered withdrawn.
In the same yea government directive was released banning employers in
China from posting "men preferred" or "men only" job advertising, and
banning companies from asking women seeking jobs about their
childbearing and marriage plans or requiring applicants to take
pregnancy tests.
In 2022, the Communist Youth League of China
declared that "[e]xtreme feminism has become a poisonous tumour on the
Internet.", which aroused the dissatisfaction and controversy of
pan-feminists on Weibo.
Foot-binding
Foot binding in Chinese history was initially a mark of hierarchy and privilege in society. However, it soon became a symbol of sexism in many people's minds and lasted for over more than one hundred years.
Having a bound foot meant looking prettier as men thought smaller feet
were more beautiful and dainty for a woman. Chinese women in the
nineteenth century were expected to keep up their appearance, as they
did not have many other rights. They could not own as much property,
they did not get good education, and they showed a lot of signs of
"weakness" because they were treated so poorly.
However, scholars of Chinese religion and society note that women
generally never felt like they were being victimized by being forced to
have bound feet, but that they quietly rebelled against this societal
norm by way of acting.
Early Chinese feminists in the nineteenth century would get around the
rules that restricted to them, but not in an obvious way that would get
them in trouble.
It was seen as a privilege to have bound feet because many women in rural households who were lower class did not marry hypergamously before 1949, and therefore, usually found no benefit in participating in foot-binding. Footbinding pointed up the physical differences between men and women, and therefore, encouraged the patriarchal society.
In Chinese society during this time, parents would scare their
daughters at a very young age by telling them that they had to get
married and have bound feet to be happy in life. During the May Fourth Era, Chinese feminists began to reject foot-binding as a Feudal ideal, as they saw it as a great inequality for women in the new modern social system of the 1900s. Irene Dean, a scholar in Chinese feminism, has noted that the New Culture Movement truly shifted women's attitudes to more liberal tones. Female chastity
was enforced through the concept of footbinding and the woman's way of
paying respect to her husband and the men in power above her.
Having bound feet meant being physically held back and controlled by a
male-dominated society, and women during this time wanted to feel more
free and independent.
In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party officially banned the practice of foot binding, and strictly enforced the ban.
In spite of the ban, some people in China continued the practice in
secret, even though the Communist Party enforced the ban by threat of
execution.
Thoughts on gender in the New Culture Movement
During the early years of the New Culture Movement, intellectuals and scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, He Dong, and Hu Shih
called for the creation of a new Chinese culture based on global and
western standards, especially democracy and science.
Gender was also a central issue during the movement. In addition to the
call for an institutional change of the patriarchal family in favor of
individual freedom and women's liberation, many scholars also discussed
various gender issues in their writings.
Lu Xun, a leading figure and influential writer of modern Chinese literature, published an article in the New Youth in 1918 titled "My Views on Chastity." As a response to the cult of female chastity in Neo-Confucianism which believed "starving to death is a small matter, but losing chastity is a great matter,"
Lu Xun directly argues against the idea that losing female chastity is
the cause of corruption of social morality, questioning the functioning
of patriarchal ideology in blaming women for the decline of a nation.
"Why should women shoulder the whole responsibility for saving the
world?" writes Lu Xun, "According to the old school, women belong to the
yin, or negative element. Their place is in the home, as chattels of
men. Surely, then, the onus for governing the state and saving the
country should rest with the men, who belong to the men. However, a
country's downfall is always blamed on women. Willy-nilly they have
shouldered the sins of mankind for more than three thousand years. Since
men are not brought to book and have no sense of shame, they go on
seducing women as just as they please, while writers treat such
incidents as romantic."
In November 1919, Miss Zhao's suicide
sparked cultural debate regarding the role of modern women in social
and political life, including among those involved in the New Culture
Movement.
A woman forced into an arranged marriage by her family, Miss Zhao,
committed suicide by cutting her throat while being transported to the
house of her would-be husband.
The formerly routine occurrence of a woman's suicide to avoid arranged
marriage became an important center of debate for Chinese feminists.
Feminist commentators included Mao Zedong, who published nine newspaper
articles about the suicide and the need to overhaul societal norms
relating to women. Simultaneously, Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House was newly translated and being performed in Shanghai. The example of the play's Nora further fueled radical intellectuals and the discussion of women's roles in China.
After reading the play in 1924, Lu Xun wrote a continuation of
the story titled "What Happens after Nora Leaves Home?" In his own
story, Lu Xun explores what might happen if China's own version of Nora
left home and he has a very pessimistic view of Nora and her liberation.
Lu Xun proposes the idea that unless a structural and systemic
reforming has been accomplished, any individual liberation will
eventually end up in misery. In the same year, Lu Xun published a novel titled The New Year Sacrifice.
One of the major themes of the novel is women's rights and marriage
practices (including arranged marriages), as he writes, "This poor
woman, abandoned by people in the dust as a tiresome and worn-out toy,
once left her own imprint in the dust, and those who enjoy life must
have wondered at her for wishing to prolong her existence; but now at
least she has been swept clear by eternity. Whether spirits exist or not
I do not know; but in the present world when a meaningless existence
ends, so that someone whom others are tired of seeing is no longer seen,
it is just as well, both for the individual concerned and for others."
In addition to Lu Xun, there were also important female writers
who focused on women's situation and gender liberation after the May Fourth Movement, including Feng Yuanjun and Lu Yin.
Differences from Western feminism
Chinese
feminism differs from Western feminism in that Chinese feminism has no
history of assuming that "man" and "woman" are natural categories.
Rather, Chinese culture has always assumed that "man" and "woman" are
socially constructed categories. Chinese sociologist and sexologist Pan Suiming
once used the constructionist framework to argue that “sexuality” was
never seen as a “biological instinct” in ancient China. Sexuality in its
natural form never exists, and it is only represented in a framework of
social construction
and cultural interpretation. As he contends, the west constructed the
scientific discourse of biological sex based on preexisted notions of
different genders, while in China, since the scientific truth of gender
was never a big concern of traditional Chinese culture, gender is only
seen as various gender roles played by men and women throughout the
history of China.
Moreover, most of the leaders in Chinese feminism movements are men,
not women, while in western countries, women are the main sponsors of
movements for Woman's Rights. Unlike Western feminism movements initiated by grassroots activists, modern Chinese feminism began as a matter of state policy. That is, the Communist Party's ideology during the Revolution of 1949
held that equal labor and social participation was necessary to advance
the nation's prosperity. However, there are also radical scholars who
have pointed out that gender equality was never a central concern of
early state policies, and the proposed idea of “equal labor” still
signifies a hierarchal nature of gendered division of labor.
For example, the Iron Girl campaign was one of the famous campaigns
during the Communist revolution which promoted equal labor and social
participation of women. Initially, women were organized and mobilized to
enter traditional male occupations to serve as a reserve labor force
and to compensate for the labor shortage caused by the outflow of men's
labor, not for the purpose of creating gender equality. Often the
purpose of making “women do men's work” was a pragmatic choice that
local administrators made when men alone could not handle the work.
Western feminism differs from Chinese feminism in the way that it
focuses a lot on "gender", which is not the way that feminism is
analyzed historically in China.
Some Chinese feminists agree with the sense of translatability and
transferability in Chinese feminism, while others do not.
"Translatability" and "transferability" refer to mixing Chinese feminism
with Western feminism. Support for this concept is mostly a Western
ideal, but feminists such as Wang Zheng also support spreading the
two-word phrase that Chinese culture uses for "gender." In Chinese culture, the phrase, "Shehui xingbie" implies something different than the English word, "gender." "Shehui" means "social," and "xingbie" means "gender/sex." The phrase points up the constructed gender roles in China,
which many Chinese feminists have analyzed. Some Chinese feminists toy
with this phrase as a way of breaking away from the roles in which they
are expected to live up to in their culture. Chinese feminists who
disagree with this type of feminism say that it has to do with assimilation to western countries.
Others, such as Li Xiaojiang, do not; they believe that translatability and transferability are becoming the issue for Chinese feminism and its location in international feminism. Additionally, filmmaker Li Yu
notes that Chinese feminism in a classic sense requires a softer and
quieter voice than the face of Western feminism. However, now that there
are more facets inspiring anger among Chinese women, there seems to be a
clash between different types of feminism. A lot of Western feminists
see these quiet and more subdued Chinese feminists as "anti-feminist"
due to, one could say, a lack of understanding of Chinese culture and
history. These ideals come from three decades of post-Maoist China. Additionally, others see the concept of "difference" as an important facet to their idea of feminism, meaning being a third world woman should be considered, in their opinion, to be separate from the notion of Western feminism.
More recent scholarly analysis begins with the naming and aims to
identify the forms of gender struggles popularly referred to as "Chinese
feminism" within China and in anglophone academe. The main strains of
gender contentions engage, culturally and materially, with the hegemonic
marriage institution of postsocialist China. These actual contentions
on the ground, however, are obscured by the two dominant analytical
perspectives, both of which follow lineages of Western thoughts and
priorities: "Chinese feminism is discursively annihilated as it is
besieged by the liberal preoccupation with China's 'authoritarian present' and the new left agenda to resurrect its 'socialist legacy.'"
The development of Chinese feminist theory is connected to the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
Throughout the twentieth century, the problems that feminists discussed
were issues that addressed the relationship between the Communist
government and women. Women were often excluded from policy debate, and could not argue against government policies or programs.
Xinyan Jiang has stated that although feminists have fought for social
equality, they still face discrimination because of economic and social
challenges in China. Li Xiaojiang
is a writer and scholar that was active during the 1980s in China, and
is considered to be one of the most prominent women scholars of the
decade by scholars such as Wang Zheng.
Her influence led to the start of the first women's studies classes and
the first women's studies department in China and Li also created the
Women's Studies Department at Zhengzhou University. Her 1983 essay "Progress of Mankind and Women's Liberation" (Renlei jinbu yu funü jiefang) was the first women's studies publication in China; the Association of Women's Studies was founded two years later.
Her theory was rooted in highlighting the gender and sexual differences
prevalent in China at the time. She explained historical discrepancies
through arguing that traditional cultural norms existed in socialist China.
She also expressed the difficulty for women to identify in China, as
they were torn between their established role at home and their new
liberation put upon them by socialism.
Nicola Spakowski has stated that Li is somewhat critical of the
influence of Western feminism on Chinese feminism. Li argues that
because there are cultural and language differences between the East and
West, the influence of Western ideology becomes a threat to
establishing an independent Chinese feminist theory.
Another early 20th century prominent feminist was the anarchistHe-Yin Zhen who founded the Journal "Natural Justice" while in exile in Japan. He-Yin focused on issues within Chinese feminist theory rather than issues with comparing it to Western feminism.
However, her theories are not specific to Chinese culture, so she is
considered a global feminist by historians such as Mary John.
Her essay, "On Women's Liberation" addressed women's issues within
China, particularly how women's liberation is decided by others within
the hierarchical system of society at the time.
Her essay, "On the Question of Women's Labor" discusses how "modern
form of labor" has impacted women, and how their bodies are historically
tied to their labor.
Though not self-identified as a feminist, Ding Ling's
writings and thoughts on gender issues resonate a lot with feminist
ideas and ideals. In March 1932, Ding Ling joined the Chinese Communist
Party, and she was recognized as an active writer in the League of Left-Wing Writers.
During her time in the CCP, Ding Ling published several well-known
essays and novels concerning gender issues and living situation of
women. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper, titled
"Thoughts on March 8", questioning the party's commitment to change
popular attitudes towards women.
Because of her explicit descriptions of sentimentality and sexuality,
as well as her public critique of the Party's leadership, Ding Ling was
denounced as a "rightist" and purged from the party in 1957. Her fiction
and essays were then also banned. After many years of imprisonment, she
reemerged in 1979, and became the vice president of the Chinese
Writers' Association.
Contemporary Chinese feminist thinkers, activists, writers and lawyers include: Ai Xiongming, Wang Zheng, Lü Pin, and Zhao Sile.
Feminist movements and organizations in China
It
was not until the 20th century when reforms for women's rights began as
issues concerning women came under the spotlight. Unexpectedly, most of
the early reforms for Chinese Women were conducted by men. For example,
the May Fourth Movement
of 1919 was the first impactful cultural movement of modern China,
which heavily enlightened China on the importance of a woman's role in
society. This movement promoted women's suffrage, denounced foot binding
and shone light on the inhumanity of arranged marriages and the poor
quality of women's education.
By the late 20th century, women began to gain greater autonomy
through the formation of women-only organizations. Chinese women's
organizations began to emerge during the Zhang Mao era (1948–1976) such as the All-China Women's Federation. These organizations allowed issues concerning women's interests, welfare, and equal rights to be addressed.
This organization was established in 1949 to protect women's rights
and represent their interests. Scholar Qi Wang explains this all female
non-governmental organization in a feminist context where women were
finally challenging the government's tighter control on social
organizations.
These were feminist modes of protests, in private and public spaces,
that contributed to the introduction of new generational changes to
resist inequalities. Other organizations in China, such as the Human Rights Watch, addresses that the ACWF "is promoting a damaging narrative about women's subservience in an attempt to fix social issues". Since the head positions of the ACWF are appointed by the Chinese Communist Party,
women who hold positions of leadership do not necessarily represent the
interests of Chinese women, because they are not elected by the people,
but appointed by the party/state.
Local women's federations have also long lacked the power to act,
causing local women's rights to face unreformed institutional problems
such as political marginalization, bureaucracy, and poor implementation,
which has hindered the further development of national feminism in
China.
The Feminist Five is a group of five young Chinesefeminists
who planned a demonstration against sexual harassment on public
transportation. They became known after the Chinese government arrested
them for this demonstration.
Reason for arrest
In
early March 2015, young feminists around China were preparing to
distribute stickers with information about gender equality and sexual
harassment, such as men groping women on crowded trains and buses, to
commemorate the International Women's Day. But on March 6, 2015, the police arrested dozens of people in Beijing, the southern city of Guangzhou, and the eastern city of Hangzhou. Most of the arrested were released within a few days of the incident. However, Li Maizi (birth name Li Tingting) (李婷婷) (30), Wei Tingting (韦婷婷) (26), Zheng Churan nicknamed “Giant Rabbit” (郑楚然) (25), Wu Rongrong (武嵘嵘) (30), and Wang Man (王曼) (33), were detained on suspicion of "Picking quarrels and provoking trouble". They were held inside the Beijing Haidian Detention Center, where they were interrogated daily.
International attention
The
timing of the arrest and detention of the feminist five increased the
amount of international attention at this event. A hashtag campaign
#FreetheFive spread news about their arrest quickly and gained support
of people from all around the world. By the end of their detention, over two million people had signed petitions that demanded their release.
Several governments and NGOs
on women's rights saw their arrest as a provocative and disrespectful
action from the Chinese government towards the international feminist
community. The feminists were arrested right before the International Women's Day and during CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping's preparations to co-host UN summit on women's rights as a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing. In reaction Hillary Clinton tweeted, "Xi hosting a meeting on women's rights at the UN while persecuting feminists? Shameless." Such global diplomatic and media pressure lead to the eventual release of the Feminist Five.
At the end of 2015, Amnesty International recalled that during "the past
two years, the Chinese authorities have stopped the activities of three
non-governmental organizations defending the rights of women." And that
moreover "the Chinese authorities are currently detaining at least 11
women's rights activists and are persecuting dozens of others." Among
these was the lawyer Wang Yu, who defended the five activists arrested
in March 2015.
Their release
Following
a 37-day period of detainment, the Feminist Five secured their release
on bail on April 13, 2015. This marked a historic moment as the group
became the initial cohort of social activists in China to be liberated
from detention simultaneously. Despite their release from prison, the
Chinese government continues to regard these women as criminal suspects.
This classification imposes constraints on various aspects of their
lives, affecting their employment prospects, restricting their physical
movement, and limiting their civil and political rights.
Events that came after the Feminist Five
After
the release of the Feminist Five, Hong Fincher interviewed the female
activist, as she was interested in their impact on the world thus was
one of the inspirations that lead to her book, released in 2018, titled Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China.
There were not a lot of feminist activities happening in China after the arrest of the Feminist Five. Although the movement gained a lot of attention, it soon became a lot
more difficult to make activism a full-time job in China as it has been a
struggle to obtain financial support for their activist work and their
personal means.
The reason for this is because in the China Change article, it says
that "... it is now illegal to accept funding from foundations that have
not established offices in China.", and the lack of funding makes it difficult for new recruits to join the feminist movement.
One of the Feminist Five faced consequences from their actions. Wu Rongrong, (武嵘嵘) had a 10-year travel ban from leaving China after trying to gain visa to Hong Kong for law school. In the year 2017, Wu Rongrong was finally able to renew her passport to Hong Kong and is able to study Law there.
Zheng Churan, another one of the Feminist Five, protested against Donald Trump and pointing out the negative behaviours he had done towards woman.
The actions of the Feminist Five lead to the emergence in popularity, within China, of an ongoing movement, called the #MeToo movement.
Because of this, many university students, both female and male, in
China had gathered to sign petitions against harassment, showing that
the younger generations are taking action on these issues that happen in
China.
Feminism in parts of the Western world has been an ongoing movement since the turn of the century. During its inception, feminism has gone through a series of four high moments termed Waves. First-wave feminism was oriented around the station of middle- or upper-class white women and involved suffrage and political equality, education, right to property, organizational leadership, and marital freedoms. Second-wave feminism
attempted to further combat social and cultural inequalities. Although
the first wave of feminism involved mainly middle class white women, the
second wave brought in women of different social classes, women of
color, and women from other developing nations that were seeking
solidarity. Third-wave feminism
continued to address the financial, social, and cultural inequalities
of women in business and in their home lives, and included renewed
campaigning for greater influence of women in politics and media. In
reaction to political activism, feminists have also had to maintain
focus on women's reproductive rights, such as the right to abortion. Fourth-wave feminism examines the interlocking systems of power that contribute to the social stratification of traditionally marginalized groups, as well as the world around them.
The base of the Women's Movement, since its inception, has been
grounded in the injustice of inequality between men and women.
Throughout history, the relationship between men and women has been that
of a patriarchal society, citing the law of nature as the justification, which was interpreted to mean women are inferior to men. Allan Johnson, a sociologist who studies masculinity,
wrote of patriarchy: "Patriarchy encourages men to seek security,
status, and other rewards through control; to fear other men's ability
to control and harm them; and to identify being in control as both their
best defense against loss and humiliation and the surest route to what
they need and desire"(Johnson 26).
During the pre-feminist era, women were expected to be proper,
delicate, and emotional nurturers of the household. They were raised in a
manner in which gaining a husband to take care of them and raising a
family was their ultimate priority. Author Mary Wollstonecraft wrote of the lesser sex in her 1792 novels A Vindication of the Rights of Woman & A Vindication of the Rights of Men, "..for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are Sacrificed
to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious
eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they
ought to have arrived at maturity" (Wollstonecraft 9). Early ideas and activism of pro-feminism beliefs before the existence of the Feminist movement are described as protofeminist.
Protofeminists in the United States organized before the Seneca
Falls convention as part of the suffrage, abolition, and other
movements. Gender equality movements were practiced within the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations long before America was colonized (Wagner, Steinem 45). Some have come to recognize the beginning of the feminist movement in 1832, as The American Anti-Slavery Society
(AASS), and The Connecticut Female Anti-Slavery Society formed as early
as 1833 (Wagner, Steinem 48). By the year 1837, 139 AASS societies were
formed across the nation (Wagner, Steinem 47). The first national AASS
convention was held in New York City in 1837 (Wagner, Steinem 48).
During the first convention, it was debated there whether black women
could participate(48). By the second and third conventions, demands were
heard which saw to it that conventions were open to African American
leadership and membership participation. On the evening of the second
convention held in Philadelphia Hall, after the meeting adjourned and
the attendees left, a violent mob burned down the hall(49). The issues
discussed included the vote, oppression, and slavery, and laid the basis
for future movements.
On November 15, 1895, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote an address describing how, in her perspective, the Seneca Falls Convention
"... was the first woman's rights convention ever held in the world ...
a declaration was read and signed by most of those present, and a
series of radical resolutions adopted" (356-7). Stanton's recollection prompted historians since the 1950s to attribute the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 (at which the Women's Suffrage Movement
began in the United States) as the earliest North American Feminist
Movement. The convention met annually for fifteen years thereafter.[9] Attendees drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, outlining the new movement's ideology and political strategies.
The earliest North American and European international women's organizations were the International Council of Women, established in 1888 in Washington, DC, US.
The term Feminist Movement was coined in the late nineteenth century to
distinguish the Feminist Movement from the Women's Movement, allowing
for inclusion of male feminists. The new movement thus prompted the likes of male feminists George Lansbury of the British Labour Party to run for political candidacy on the feminist ticket in 1906.
As the awareness of feminist movements evolved, transnational feminism
and nationalist feminist movements established themselves worldwide. Priorities and ideas vary based on the political or cultural positions of the women in the area where each movement originates.
General topics of feminist coalition politics include lack of legal
rights, poverty, medical vulnerability, and labor. These political
issues are often organized around division by class, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nationality, and age. Early
Russian nationalist feminist activists founded the All-Russian Union for Women's Equality in 1905, allowing women to vote and allowing co-education. In 1931, the All-Asian Women's Conference was held in Lahore in what was then British India. This meeting is one example of the time period which "demonstrated the networking of women across various divides". The spirit of the conference can be understood as International or Global feminist.
Pre-feminism society
The
feminist movement has been an ongoing force throughout history. There
is no way to determine when the exact date was when the feminist
movement was first thought up, because women and men have been writing
on the topic for thousands of years. For instance, the female poet from
Ancient Greece, Sappho,
born in roughly 615 BC, made waves as an acclaimed poet during a time
when the written word was conducted primarily by men. She wrote poetry
about, among other things, sexuality.
There have been four main waves of feminism since the beginning
of the feminist movement in Western society, each with their own fight
for women's rights. The first in the wave was in the 1840s. It was
based on Education, right to property, organizational leadership, right
to vote, and marital freedoms. The second wave was in the 1960s. It was
based on gender issues, women's sexual liberation, reproductive rights,
job opportunities for women, violence against women, and changes in
custody and divorce laws. The third wave was in the 1990s. It was based
on individualism, diversity, redefined what it meant to be a feminist, intersectionality, sex positivity, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism. Lastly, the fourth wave began in the 2000s, and is currently still in progress. It has been based around female empowerment, body shaming, sexual harassment,
spiritual concerns, human rights, and concerns for the planet. The
feminist movement continued during the periods between waves, just not
to the extent of the four large motions.
The first documented gathering of women to form a movement with a common goal was on 5 October 1789, during the French Revolution. The event was later referred to as the Women's March on Versailles.
The gathering was based on a lack of food, high market prices, and the
fear of another famine occurring across France. On that day, women along
with revolutionaries, had planned to gather in the market. Once gathered, the crowd stormed the Hotel de Ville (the City Hall of Paris) where weapons were being stored. The armed crowd then marched to the Palace of Versailles to draw King Louis XVI's
attention to the high prices and food shortages. For King Louis XVI's
remaining time on the throne, he stopped fighting the Revolutionaries.
The march signaled a sort of change of power, showing that there is
power in the people, and diminished the perception that the monarch was
invincible.
The French Revolution began with the inequality felt by French citizens and came as a reaction from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" which was signed in August 1789. The declaration gave rights to men who were termed Active Citizens.
Active Citizenship was given to French men who were twenty-five years,
or older, worked, and paid taxes, and who could not be titled a servant. The declaration dismissed the population who were women, foreigners, children, and servants, as passive citizens. Passive citizens, French women in particular, focused their fight on gaining citizenship and equal rights.
One of the first women to speak out on women's rights and inequality was French playwright Olympes de Gouges, who wrote the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman"
in 1791, in contrast to the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen." She famously stated, "Women are born free and are man's
equal in law. Social distinctions can be founded solely on common
utility"(De Gouges 1791).
Olympes used her words to urge women to speak up and take control of
their rights. She demonstrated the similarity between the duties as a
citizen of both men and women and the cohesion to ensue if both genders
were considered equal.
British philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft published in 1792 what has been seen as the first feminist treaty on the human rights of women, "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." She pressed the issue of equality between men and women, stating: "No society can be either virtuous or moral while half of the population are being subjugated by the other half'(Wollstonecraft 2009 p.59).
She went on to write about the Law of Nature and the desire for
women to present more as themselves, and demand respect and equality
from their male counterparts, "...men endeavor to sink us still lower,
merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women,
intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their
senses, pay them, do not see, to obtain a durable interest in their
hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow-creatures who find
amusement in their society"(Wollstonecraft 2008, p. 10).
During the mid-nineteenth century, the women's movement developed
as a result of women striving to improve their status and usefulness in
society. Nancy Cott,
historian and professor, wrote about the objectives of the feminist
movement: "to initiate measures of charitable benevolence, temperance, and social welfare and to initiate struggles for civil rights, social freedoms, higher education, remunerative occupations, and the ballot"(Cott 1987, p. 3).
The setting of these goals resulted from women's rising awareness of
the precariousness of their situation in the patriarchal society of the
1800s. The developing movement promoted a series of new images for
women: True Womanhood, Real Womanhood, Public Womanhood, and New
Womanhood"(Cruea 2005, p. 2).
True Womanhood was the ideal that women were meant to be pure and
moral. A true woman was raised learning manners and submission to males
to be a good wife and mother.
Real Womanhood came to be with the Civil war,
when women were forced to work in place of men who were at war. Real
Women learned how to support themselves and took that knowledge with
them in their marriage and education.
Public Womanhood came with women being allowed to work domestic
type jobs such as nursing, teaching, and secretary, which were jobs
previously performed by men, but the corporation could pay women much
less than men.
New Womanhood was based on eliminating the traditional conformity of women's roles, inferiority from men, and living a more fulfilled life.
"The four overlapping phases of the Women's Movement advanced
women from domestic prisoners to significant members of their
communities within less than a century"(Cruea 2005, p. 17).
In the 1820s the women's movement, then called the Temperance movement,
expanded from Europe and moved into the United States. Women began
speaking out on the effects of the consumption of alcohol had on the
morals of their husbands and blamed it on the problems within their
household. They called for a moral reform by limiting or prohibiting the
sale and consumption of alcohol, beginning the fight toward Prohibition
which did not begin until 1920. The women fighting for the temperance
movement came to the realization, without the ability to vote on the
issues they were fighting for, nothing would ever change.
Feminist movement in Western society
Feminism
in the United States, Canada, and a number of countries in Western
Europe has been divided by scholars into three waves: first, second and third-wave feminism. Recent (early 2010s) research suggests there may be a fourth wave characterized, in part, by new media platforms.
The feminist movement's agenda includes acting as a counterpart
to the putatively patriarchal strands in the dominant masculine culture.
While differing during the progression of "waves", it is a movement
that has sought to challenge the political structure, power holders, and
cultural beliefs or practices.
Although antecedents to feminism may be found far back before the
18th century, the seeds of the modern feminist movement were planted
during the late part of that century. Christine de Pizan,
a late medieval writer, was possibly the earliest feminist in the
western tradition. She is believed to be the first woman to make a
living out of writing. Feminist thought began to take a more substantial shape during the Enlightenment with such thinkers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women's education. The first scientific society for women was founded in Middelburg, a city in the south of the Dutch republic, in 1785.
First Wave Feminism
Though the feminist movement had already begun in America with the Temperance Movement, the First Wave of Feminism, known as the Suffragette Movement, began on 19–20 July 1848 during the first Women's Right Convention
in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention drew over 300 people, who
were predominately white, middle-class women. Sixty-eight women and
thirty-two men signed the "Declaration of Sentiments",
which called for equal rights for women and men on the basis of
education, right to property, organizational leadership, right to vote,
and marital freedoms.
For the Suffragette's first major display, they held a parade on 3
March 1913, in Washington DC. The first suffragette parade, which was
also the first civil rights march on Washington, was coordinated by Alice Paul and the National American Suffrage Association. The parade drew over five thousand participants who were led by Inez Milholland. The parade was strategically scheduled for the day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson,
which drew in a lot of people to Washington. The women gathered in
front of the US Capitol and then traveled fourteen blocks to the
Treasury Department. The parade proceeded through the crowd of angry
spectators who became verbally and physically abusive toward the women.
By the end of the demonstration, there was reported at least one hundred
people taken to the hospital due to injuries.
In 1918 Crystal Eastman wrote an article published in the Birth Control Review,
she contended that birth control is a fundamental right for women and
must be available as an alternative if they are to participate fully in
the modern world. "In short, if feminism, conscious and bold and
intelligent, leads the demand, it will be supported by the secret
eagerness of all women to control the size of their families, and a
suffrage state should make short work of repealing these old laws that
stand in the way of birth control." She stated "I don't believe there is
one woman within the confines of this state who does not believe in
birth control!"(Eastman 1918)
The women who made the first efforts towards women's suffrage
came from more stable and privileged backgrounds, and were able to
dedicate time and energy into making change. Initial developments for
women, therefore, mainly benefited white women in the middle and upper
classes. During the second wave, the feminist movement became more
inclusive of women of color and women of different cultures.
Second Wave Feminism
The 1960s second wave of feminism was termed the Women's liberation movement. It was the largest and broadest social movement in US history. The second wave was based around a sociopolitical-cultural movement. Activists fought for gender issues, women's sexual liberation, reproductive rights, job opportunities for women, violence against women, and changes in custody and divorce laws. It is believed the feminist movement gained attention in 1963, when Betty Friedan published her novel, The Feminine Mystique.
Friedan wrote of "the problem that has no name"(Friedan 1963), as a way
to describe the depression women felt about their limited choices in
life. While reading The Feminine Mystique, women found they related to
what Friedan wrote. Women were forced to look at themselves in a way
they had not before. They saw within themselves, all the things they had
given up in the name of conformity.
The women's movement became more popular in May 1968 when women began to read again, more widely, the book The Second Sex, written in 1949 by a defender of women's rights, Simone de Beauvoir
(and translated into English for the first time in 1953; later
translation 2009). De Beauvoir's writing explained why it was difficult
for talented women to become successful. The obstacles de Beauvoir
enumerates include women's inability to make as much money as men do in
the same profession, women's domestic responsibilities, society's lack
of support towards talented women, and women's fear that success will
lead to an annoyed husband or prevent them from even finding a husband
at all. De Beauvoir also argues that women lack ambition because of how
they are raised, noting that girls are told to follow the duties of
their mothers, whereas boys are told to exceed the accomplishments of
their fathers. Along with other influences, such as Betty Friedan,
Simone de Beauvoir's work helped the feminist movement to solidify the
second wave. Contributors to The Women's Liberation Movement include
Simone de Beauvoir, Christiane Rochefort, Christine Delphy and Anne Tristan.
The defining moment in the 1960s was a demonstration held to protest against the Miss America
pageant in Atlantic City on 7 September 1968, termed the "cattle
parade". The purpose of the protest was to call attention to beauty
standards and the objectification of women.
Through this era, women gained equal rights such as a right to an
education, a right to work, and a right to contraception and abortion.
One of the most important issues that The Women's Liberation movement
faced was the banning of abortion and contraception, which the group saw
as a violation of women's rights. Thus, they made a declaration known
as Le Manifeste de 343 which held signatures from 343 women admitting to having had an illegal abortion. The declaration was published in two French newspapers, Le Nouvel observateur and Le Monde,
on 5 April 1971. The group gained support upon the publication. Women
received the right to abort with the passing of the Veil Law in 1975.
Third Wave Feminism
The 1980s and 1990s drew a different perspective in the feminist movement and was termed Grrl Feminism or Riot Grrl Feminism. The ideas of this era took root with the popularization of the Riot grrrl feminist punk subculture in Olympia, Washington, in the early 1990s. The feminists of this era strived to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. They embraced individualism and diversity,
and pushed to eliminate conformity. The twentieth century woman had the
mindset of wanting to have it all. They wanted a professional career,
as well as be a wife and mother. Harriet Kimble Wrye PhD, ABPP, FIPA
wrote of her research on the psychoanalytic perspectives of being a
feminist in the twentieth century, "So many of us look back, and
recognizing the pressures under which we struggled, wonder how we did
what we did and at what price"(Wrye 2009).
On 11 October 1991, the first televised workplace sexual harassment case was aired. Anita Hill, who was a law professor at the time accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas
of persistent sexual harassment. Anita Hill recounted the details of
her experience in court to an all male panel. Despite there being four
corroborating witnesses, the case was dismissed and Clarence Thomas was
confirmed into the Supreme Court. Though the case was dismissed, it
encouraged other women to speak out on their own experiences which led
to Congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which gave legal action against workplace sexual harassment.
The United Nations Human Development Report 2004 estimated
that when both paid employment and unpaid household tasks are accounted
for, on average women work more than men. In rural areas of selected
developing countries women performed an average of 20% more work than
men, or 120% of men's total work, an additional 102 minutes per day. In
the OECD
countries surveyed, on average women performed 5% more work than men, or
105% of men's total work—an additional 20 minutes per day. However, men
did up to 19 minutes more work per day than women in five out of the
eighteen OECD countries surveyed: Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Israel, and
The Netherlands. According to UN Women,
"Women perform 66 percent of the world's work, produce 50 percent of
the food, but earn 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the
property."
During the course of the women's movement in Western society, affective changes have taken place, including women's suffrage,
the right to initiate divorce proceedings and "no fault" divorce, the
right of women to make individual decisions regarding pregnancy
(including access to contraceptives and abortion), and the right to own property. It has also led to broad employment for women at more equitable wages, and access to university education.
Prior to the 20th century, women in China were considered essentially different from men. Feminism in China started in the 20th century with the Chinese Revolution in 1911. In China, Feminism has a strong association with socialism and class issues.
Some commentators believe that this close association is damaging to
Chinese feminism and argue that the interests of party are placed before
those of women.
In the patriarchal society, the struggle for women's emancipation
means to enact laws that guarantee women's full equality of race, sex,
property and freedom of marriage. To further eliminate the legacy of the
class society of patriarchal women (drowning of infants, corset, foot binding,
etc.), discrimination, play, mutilate women's traditional prejudice and
habitual forces on the basis of the development of productive forces,
it is gradually needful on achieving gender in politics, economy, social
and family aspects of equality.
Before the westernization movement and the reform movement, women had set off a wave of their own strength in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
(1851–1864). However, there are too many women from the bottom
identities in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It is difficult to get rid
of the fate of being used. Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, women with
more knowledges took the initiative in the fight for women's rights and
that is where feminism basically started.
The term 'feminism' was first transmitted to China in 1791 which
was proposed by Olympe de Gouges and promoted the 'women's liberation'.
The feminist movement in China was mainly kickstarted and driven by male
feminists prior to female feminists.
Key male feminists in China in the 19th to 20th century included Liang Qichao, Ma Junwu and Jin Tianhe.
In 1897, Liang Qichao proposed banning of foot-binding and encouraged
women to engage in the workforce, political environment and education.
The foot-binding costume had long been established in China which was an
act to display the beauty and social status of women by binding their
feet into an extremely small shoe with good decorations and ornaments.
Liang Qichao proposed the abolishment of this act due to concern the
health of female being a supportive wives and caring mothers. He also
proposed to reduce the number of female dependents in family and
encouraged women to receive the rights of education and enter the
workforce to be economic independent from men and finally help the
nation to reach higher wealth and prosperity. For feminist Ma Junwu and
Jin Tianhe, they both supported the equality between husbands and wives,
women enjoy legitimate and equal rights and also rights to enter the
political sphere. A key assertion from Jin Tianhe was women as the
mother of the nation. These views from male feminists in early feminism
in China represented the image of ideal women in the imagination of men.
Key female feminists in China in the 19th to 20th century
included Lin Zongsu, He Zhen, Chen Xiefen and Qiu Jin. The female
feminists in early China focused more on the methods or ways that women
should behave and liberate themselves to achieve equal and deserved
rights and independence. He Zhen expressed her opinion that women's
liberation was not correlated to the interest of the nation and she
analysed three reasons behind the male feminists included: following the
Western trend, to alleviate their financial burdens and high quality of
reproduction. Besides, Li Zongsu proposed that women should strive for
their legitimate rights which includes broader aspects than the male
feminists: call for their own right over men, the Qing Court and in an
international extent.
In the Qing Dynasty, the discussion on feminism had two
dimensions including the sex differences between men and women such as
maternal role and duties of women and social difference between genders;
the other dimension was the aim of liberation of women. The view of the
feminists were diverse: some believed feminism was benefiting the
nation and some believed feminism was associated with the individual
development of female in improving their rights and welfare.
In the 1970s, the Marxist philosophy about female and feminism
was transmitted to China and became the guiding principle of feminism
movement in China by introducing class struggle theories to address
gender quality. In the 1990s, more female scholars were adapted to
feminism in Western countries, and they promoted feminism and equal
rights for women by publishing, translating and carrying out research on
global feminism and made feminism in China as one part of their study
to raise more concern and awareness for gender equality issues.An
important means of improving women's status in China was through
legislation. After the PRC's founding in 1949, women were granted the
same rights that men were entitled to by law, largely because women's
liberation was presented as part of the Chinese nation's liberation.
Feminists are sometimes, though not exclusively, proponents of using non-sexist language, such as using "Ms" to refer to both married and unmarried women. Feminists are also often proponents of using gender-inclusive language, such as "humanity" instead of "mankind", or "they" in place of "he" where the gender is unknown.
Gender-neutral language is language usage which is aimed at minimizing assumptions regarding the gender of human referents. The advocacy of gender-neutral language reflects, at least, two different agendas: one aims to clarify the inclusion
of both sexes or genders (gender-inclusive language); the other
proposes that gender, as a category, is rarely worth marking in language
(gender-neutral language). Gender-neutral language is sometimes
described as non-sexist language by advocates and politically correct language by opponents.
Not only has the movement come to change the language into gender
neutral but the feminist movement has brought up how people use
language. Emily Martin describes the concept of how metaphors are
gendered and ingrained into everyday life. Metaphors are used in
everyday language and have become a way that people describe the world.
Martin explains that these metaphors structure how people think and in
regards to science can shape what questions are being asked. If the
right questions are not being asked then the answers are not going to be
the right either. For example, the aggressive sperm and passive egg is a
metaphor that felt 'natural' to people in history but as scientists
have reexamined this phenomenon they have come up with a new answer.
"The sperm tries to pull its getaway act even on the egg itself, but is
held down against its struggles by molecules on the surface of the egg
that hook together with counterparts on the sperm's surface, fastening
the sperm until the egg can absorb it."
This is a goal in feminism to see these gendered metaphors and bring it
to the public's attention. The outcome of looking at things in a new
perspective can produce new information.
Heterosexual relationships
The increased entry of women into the workplace beginning in the 20th century has affected gender roles and the division of labor within households. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in The Second Shift and The Time Bind
presents evidence that in two-career couples, men and women, on
average, spend about equal amounts of time working, but women still
spend more time on housework.Feminist writer Cathy Young
responds to Hochschild's assertions by arguing that, in some cases,
women may prevent the equal participation of men in housework and
parenting.
Economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst calculate that the amount of time
spent on housework by women since the 1960s has dropped considerably.
Leisure for both men and women has risen significantly and by about the
same amount for both sexes. Jeremy Greenwood, Ananth Seshadri and
Mehmet Yorukoglu argue that the introduction of modern appliances into
the home has allowed women to enter the work force.
Feminist criticisms of men's contributions to child care and
domestic labor in the Western middle class are typically centered around
the idea that it is unfair for women to be expected to perform more
than half of a household's domestic work and child care when both
members of the relationship perform an equal share of work outside the
home. Several studies provide statistical evidence that the financial
income of married men does not affect their rate of attending to
household duties.
In Dubious Conceptions, Kristin Luker
discusses the effect of feminism on teenage women's choices to bear
children, both in and out of wedlock. She says that as childbearing out of wedlock
has become more socially acceptable, young women, especially poor young
women, while not bearing children at a higher rate than in the 1950s,
now see less of a reason to get married before having a child. Her
explanation for this is that the economic prospects for poor men are
slim, hence poor women have a low chance of finding a husband who will
be able to provide reliable financial support due to the rise of
unemployment from more workers on the market, from just men to women and
men.
Some studies have suggested that both men and women perceive
feminism as being incompatible with romance. However, a recent survey of
U.S. undergraduates and older adults found that feminism actually has a
positive impact on relationship health for women and sexual
satisfaction for men, and found no support for negative stereotypes of
feminists.
Virginia Satir
said the need for relationship education emerged from shifting gender
roles as women gained greater rights and freedoms during the 20th
century:
"As we moved into the 20th century,
we arrived with a very clearly prescribed way that males and females in
marriage were to behave with one another ... The pattern of the
relationship between husband and wife was that of the dominant male and
submissive female ... A new era has since dawned ... the climate of
relationships had changed, and women were no longer willing to be
submissive ... The end of the dominant/submissive model in relationships
was in sight. However, there was very little that had developed to
replace the old pattern; couples floundered ... Retrospectively, one
could have expected that there would be a lot of chaos and a lot of
fall-out. The change from the dominant/submissive model to one of
equality is a monumental shift. We are learning how a relationship based
on genuine feelings of equality can operate practically."
Historically there has been a need to study and contribute to the
health and well-being of a woman that previously has been lacking. Londa Schiebinger
suggests that the common biomedical model is no longer adequate and
there is a need for a broader model to ensure that all aspects of a
woman are being cared for. Schiebinger describes six contributions that
must occur to have success: political movement, academic women studies,
affirmative action, health equality act, geo-political forces, and
professional women not being afraid to talk openly about women issues.
Political movements come from the streets and are what the people as a
whole want to see changed. An academic women study is the support from
universities in order to teach a subject that most people have never
encountered. Affirmative action
enacted is a legal change to acknowledge and do something for the times
of neglect people were subjected to. Women's Health Equity Act
legally enforces the idea that medicine needs to be tested in suitable
standards such as including women in research studies and is also
allocates a set amount of money to research diseases that are specific
towards women. Research has shown that there is a lack of research in
autoimmune disease, which mainly affects women. "Despite their
prevalence and morbidity, little progress has been made toward a better
understanding of those conditions, identifying risk factors, or
developing a cure" this article reinforces the progress that still needs
to be made. Geo-political forces can improve health, when the country
is not at a sense of threat in war there is more funding and resources
to focus on other needs, such as women's health. Lastly, professional
women not being afraid to talk about women's issues moves women from
entering into these jobs and preventing them for just acting as men and
instead embracing their concerns for the health of women. These six
factors need to be included for there to be change in women's health.
Feminist theology
is a movement that reconsiders the traditions, practices, scriptures,
and theologies of religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the
goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among
the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated
imagery and language about God, determining the place of women in
relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the
religion's sacred texts.
The feminist movement has affected religion and theology in profound ways. In liberal branches of Protestant Christianity, women are now allowed to be ordained as clergy, and in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, women are now allowed to be ordained as rabbis and cantors.
In some of these groups, some women are gradually obtaining positions
of power that were formerly only held by men, and their perspectives are
now sought out in developing new statements of belief. These trends,
however, have been resisted within most sects of Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity.
Within Roman Catholicism, most women understand that, through the dogma
of the faith, they are to hold, within the family, a place of love and
focus on the family. They also understand the need to rise above that
does not necessarily constitute a woman to be considered less than, but
in fact equal to, that of her husband who is called to be the patriarch
of the family and provide love and guidance to his family as well.
Christian feminism
is a branch of feminist theology which seeks to reinterpret and
understand Christianity in light of the equality of women and men. While
there is no standard set of beliefs among Christian feminists, most
agree that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically
determined characteristics such as sex.
Early feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton
concentrated almost solely on "making women equal to men." However, the
Christian feminist movement chose to concentrate on the language of
religion because they viewed the historic gendering of God as male as a
result of the pervasive influence of patriarchy. Rosemary Radford Ruether provided a systematic critique of Christian theology from a feminist and theist point of view. Stanton was an agnostic and Reuther is an agnostic who was born to Catholic parents but no longer practices the faith.
Islamic feminism is concerned with the role of women in Islam and aims for the full equality of all Muslims,
regardless of gender, in public and private life. Although rooted in
Islam, the movement's pioneers have also used secular and Western
feminist discourses. Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Quran, hadith (sayings of Muhammad), and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society.
Jewish feminism
seeks to improve the religious, legal, and social status of women
within Judaism and to open up new opportunities for religious experience
and leadership for Jewish women. In its modern form, the movement can
be traced to the early 1970s in the United States. According to Judith Plaskow, who has focused on feminism in Reform Judaism, the main issues for early Jewish feminists in these movements were the exclusion from the all-male prayer group or minyan, the exemption from positive time-bound mitzvot, and women's inability to function as witnesses and to initiate divorce.
Starting since the 1970s, the Goddess movement has been embraced by some feminists as well.
Businesses
Feminist activists have established a range of feminist businesses,
including women's bookstores, feminist credit unions, feminist presses,
feminist mail-order catalogs, and feminist restaurants. These
businesses flourished as part of the second and third-waves of feminism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Although the range of feminist businesses has increased significantly, a
study stated that women-owned businesses are frequently described as
underperforming, in that, their business remain small and marginal.
Women still have high level of barrier to become an entrepreneur
compared to males.
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