Creating a Socialist Feminist Cultural Front:Women of China(1949–1966)

Abstract

AbstractThis article is a study of socialist feminist cultural practices in the early PRC. It investigates stories behind the scenes and treats the All-China Women's Federation's official journalWomen of Chinaas a site of feminist contention to reveal gender conflicts within the Party, diverse visions of socialist transformation, and state feminist strategies in the pursuit of women's liberation. A close examination of discrepancies between the covers and contents of the magazine explicates multiple meanings in establishing a socialist feminist visual culture that attempted to disrupt gender and class hierarchies. Special attention to state feminists' identification with and divergence from the Party's agenda illuminates a unique historical process in which a gendered democracy was enacted in the creation of a feminist cultural front when the Party was consolidating its centralizing power. The article demonstrates a prominent “gender line” in the socialist state that has been neglected in much of the scholarship on the Mao era.