“The four modernizations” and Chinese policy on women

Abstract

The quest for economic development and social change that has characterized the Third World since World War II has not been an unmixed blessing. The adopted development strategies have entailed enormous social and human costs that have been, most often, distributed unequally throughout society. Women, especially those in the peasant or urban lower classes, tend to shoulder a disproportionate share of these costs as female laborpower has figured prominently in the labor mobilization strategies of countries as different in their approach to development as Malaysia and China. For women, participation in social production outside the home had usually meant a longer workday as their traditional responsibilities as wives and mothers could not be set aside and social services to relieve them of these time-consuming chores were either non-existent or too expensive. Moreover, the kinds of employment available and the conditions under which women work militate against their using their employment as a basis for creating economic and political power or even greater social independence. This failure to meet the basic needs of women that marked much of the Third World's development planning stood in marked contrast to the social experiments of the Chinese in the post-Cultural Revolution years.