Female Projectionists on the Move: Exhibiting Socialist Gender Equality in Rural China (1949–1966)

Abstract

AbstractThe gender discourse in Maoist China can be summed up in Mao's famous motto ‘men and women are the same’. Images of women operating various technologies were massively propagated in the 1950s and 1960s, illustrating that men and women were not only equal in political status but also in physical strength with the help of technology. In reality, however, women working in technical jobs were not on the same footing as their male counterparts. Taking female projectionists as the research subject, this article investigates how new professional women, assigned by the state, overcame gender bias in rural areas where a patriarchal culture prevailed. By examining the inconsistency between the Chinese Communist Party's gender policies that encouraged women's public participation and the rural culture that derided women in public space, this article contends that female projectionists’ experiences of performing screening techniques played a significant role in opening up new spaces for women's repositioning in the patriarchal society. While operating technology did not naturally give women the same social status as men, it was through female projectionists’ bodily practices that the socialist ideas of gender equality were disseminated in rural areas.