The Gendered Politics of Woman-work

Abstract

This article explores discursive tensions in Party organizations prior to and after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Specifically, it explains radicalism among grassroots women leaders during the Great Leap Forward. The author argues that some of these leaders neglected the health of women and children and even sought to dismantle grassroots women's organizations because of how they were recruited and trained in grassroots Party organizations. Whereas the Chinese Communist Party and the All China Women's Federation (ACWF) leadership sought to implement a Marxist maternalist conception of sexual equality that stressed physiological difference, grass-roots Party organizations operated on the basis of a revolutionary Maoist ethic according to which all were expected to struggle equally. Trained by local Party organizations, a number of rural women leaders identified with interpretations of sexual equality put forth by the local Party, not by the Party and ACWF leadership, and consequently transformed important aspects of woman-work during the late 1950s.