"Why Women Live":A Discourse Analysis Of Women’s Labour Issues In Women Of China

Women Of China is the only national comprehensive publication focusing on women’s issues in the early days of the founding of the people’s Republic of China.It enjoys the most important position and the most extensive influence in women’s newspapers and periodicals before and after the founding of new China.In addition,most of its editors,readers and authors are women,who can more directly express their own interest demands and emotional experience.Taking Women Of China(1949-1966)as the main historical records,this paper attempts to outline the phased changes of discourse on women’s labor under the state will,and discusses the multiple aspects of the interaction between the state will and women’s subject consciousness in this process.In the discourse space of Women Of China(1949-1966),the frequency of social labor is the highest.Accordingly,the visibility of women labor models on the industrial and agricultural production front is the highest;At the same time,the state does not ignore domestic work,but constantly theorizes and symbolizes it,confirms the position of domestic work and its undertakers in the socialist mass production system,and housewives and workers’ families also obtain corresponding political status and social identity in the national discourse.The strong political and revolutionary discourse dominated by the state will shows the direction and process of women’s participation in production and labor inside and outside the family,and shows distinct phased characteristics in different historical periods.This silent change is the externalization of the state’s attitude towards domestic and foreign productive labor at the discourse level,which not only reflects that the discourse on women’s labor has always been shaped and influenced by the state discourse,but also shows the embarrassing state that when the state discourse is out of order in the historical abnormal period,women’s labor is also silenced in the discourse.In 1958 and 1963,Women Of China organized two large-scale discussions entitled "Am I right about being diligent and frugal" and "Why do women live".Each discussion received more than 1000 letters and manuscripts.Countless ordinary women across the country stated their different views and experiences on the same topic,and constructed a relatively free discourse space dominated by women’s participation.However,in the context of that time,the dual positions of class and gender had a master-slave order.With the publication of the summary articles regulated by the state will,the repeated difficulties of women,the emotional experience and coping experience of women’s groups in the discussion have become the proof of the weaknesses of "fragile,unable to withstand twists and turns and easy to lose heart" under the "warm veil".Women,women’s discourse,women’s self statement and exploration have become unnecessary and impossible due to the disappearance of gender differences in mainstream ideological discourse.By analyzing the different forms of texts published in Women Of China(1949-1966),this paper holds that the discourse space on women’s labor is largely affected by state will,but women do not accept it purely passively.Their behavior of participating in large-scale discussion and expressing themselves is the embodiment of women’s subject consciousness.These discourses not only reveal women’s rapid or slow response to national macro issues,but also truly record their physical and emotional experience in the process of labor,and show the complex interaction between gender discourse and state will in different contexts.