Women's Liberation and Gender Obligation Equality in Urban China: Work/Family Experiences of Married Individuals in the 1950s

Abstract

Data from in-depth interviews of 80 elderly women and men, conducted during the 2000–2003 period in urban China, shed light on married individuals' lived experiences with women's liberation and gender equality under Chinese state socialism during the 1950s. When individuals' experiences are placed in a broad historical context, urban Chinese women's liberation appears as an integral part of nationalist and class campaigns and attendant freedom from family patriarchy. Subsequently, women's family autonomy and individual freedom yielded to renewed collective efforts channeled through the discursive space of gender obligation equality. This led to a dual gender configuration. At the state level, both genders were molded into state persons, whereas in the home, traditional gendered roles remained rather intact. The experiences of urban Chinese women and men marked different state–society relations and alternative trajectories of women's liberation and gender equality from those followed in the industrial West.