"Toward Liberation": On Agricultural Labor Of Women In Taihang Mountain Area During The Collectivization

After the foundation of new China, mobilizing women to participate in socialproduction became an important part of the CPC women work. With the mobilizationof the CPC, countrywomen began to get out of their homes and participate in socialproduction in large scale. They created massive wealth and value for the country andtheir collective. At the same time, they greatly changed their own quality and theircircumstances. Can we say this represents “the liberation of women”? What onearth is “the liberation of women”? Did Women in the collectivization period get trueliberation? This is an important topic of women history research as well as the focusof this article.This article concentrates on the research of the great role that women in TaihangMountain Area played in agricultural production and the significant change theybrought to themselves in the course of their participation in agricultural productionduring the collectivization period. The article also tries to introduce the plights andstruggles that the countrywomen faced during their participation in agriculturalproduction and discuss whether the countrywomen got true liberation or not in thecollectivization period. The article consists of seven parts: introduction and sixchapters of text.The introduction mainly includes the significance of the subject, academichistory, theories and methods of research as well as the resources of material.The first chapter mainly introduces women’s participation in agriculturalproduction in Taihang Mountain area. In traditional society, with the labor divisionmode of “the man goes out to work while the woman looks after the house”, Womenengaged in housework most of the time. Their major activities were cooking, washing,knitting and sewing, doing the housework and nursing children. As far as the TaihangMountain area is concerned, owing to the limited land and large population, womenseldom went to work in the field except few poor women would go there to do someassistant work. Otherwise, they would be laughed at. Because housework is hard to be quantized and can not be exchanged, the value of housework is greatly discountedin traditional conception, and housewives are regarded as hangers-on or worthlesspersons in their families. Until the eve of the anti-Japanese war, women in TaihangMountain area were under the trammel of feudal patriarchal system and wereconfined to the traditional women’s space profoundly influenced by feudal culture.After the anti-Japanese war, the CPU began to mobilize women to participate inagricultural production to fulfill the historical mission of women liberation and solvethe tremendous financial problem. With the mobilization of the CPC, women inTaihang Mountain area began to break through the feudal bondage of thousands ofyears and get rid of the single housework. The quantity and scale of womenparticipating in agricultural production enlarged gradually, which played a certain rolein agricultural production. Meanwhile, women changed their attitude toward labor.They didn’t regard labor as a disgrace any more. New family ties were formed andwomen’s social status was promoted to some extent.Chapter two focuses on the CPC’s mobilizing women to participate inproduction. Under the guidance of Marx, Ernst, Lenin and Stalin’s theories ofwomen’s emancipation, and as a result of the massive gap of labor force in economicconstruction after the foundation of new China and the reference to the experiences ofSoviet Union, mobilizing women to participate in agricultural production was still amajor task among the CPC women work. The CPC mobilized women to participate inagricultural production by means of ideological education, freeing women fromtroubles at home, making use of demonstration effect, helping women learnagricultural technologies, carrying out the policy of “equal pay for equal work”, andso on.Chapter three deals with the fact that women were gradually holding well half ofthe sky in agricultural production. With the mobilization of the CPC, the rate offemale labor force participation was rising gradually, and their roles in productionwere becoming obvious. Women were gradually holding half of the sky inagricultural production.Chapter four mainly talks about the influence they brought to themselves whenwomen participated in agricultural production. During the collectivization period, women participated in agricultural production in large scale. They not only createdenormous wealth and value for their families, their groups and the country but alsobrought great influence on the improvement of their own quality. During the processof their participation in agricultural production, they greatly improved and changedtheir work skills, mental outlook and social status.Chapter five deals with the principle of equal pay for equal work for men andwomen during the collectivization period. During that period, work points were theform to measure the quantity and quality of farmers’ work and get their correspondingpay. Because of the traditional idea of sexual discrimination and because that womenusually had comparatively low work skills, in the early days in their participation incollective labor, women generally got lower work points than men did. With theimprovement of their work skills and the increase of their work intension, womenbegan to object this scoring method. They began to ask for the application of theprinciple of equal pay for equal work to men and women alike in the agriculturalproduction. Out of their consideration of liberating women and promoting women’swork enthusiasm, the CPC gradually made equal pay for equal work to men andwomen a system and obtained certain achievement. But owing to the objectivephysiologic difference between men and women and the traditional different mode ofdivision of labor, equal pay for equal work to men and women was only a slogan andwas not truly put into effect.Chapter6presents the plights and struggles that the countrywomen were facingwhen they participated in agricultural production. During the collectivization period,there was no doubt that women’s participation in agricultural production and gettingout of their homes brought them great sense of liberation. But at the same time, theirparticipation in agricultural production also brought them unexpected problems.There were two obvious problems. One of them was that men didn’t share houseworkcorrespondingly while women were out to work. Women still had to take on most ofthe housework and thus added their burden. Their bondage was doubled. The otherone was that the CPC only encouraged women to develop “soaring drive” andone-sidedly advocated “hard work” and “intense work”. Keeping on work despiteillness was praised and sexual difference was ignored. So in the course of women’s liberation, women’s health was greatly damaged.Therefore, in the collectivization period, women’s participation in agriculturalproduction brought them not only liberation but also pains and struggles that can’t bevoiced. Firstly, equal pay for equal work for men and women was regarded the goalof women’s liberation and sexual equality was simply interpreted as men and womenshould be treated alike. Women were treated with the standard of men. Strengthequality was regarded the sign of women’s liberation. Secondly, men didn’t sharehousework correspondingly while women entered the society and participated inagricultural work. Housework was still regarded as women’s duty. So during thecollectivization period and a long time after that, women were double burdened withagricultural work and housework. They were exhausted and miserable. Sexualequality was not really realized. In the collectivization period, women’s liberationmovement seemed intense but women only got liberation not liberty. This wasbecause of the offside of state power and the deficiency of women’s rights. The aimof sexual equality was to advocate women to make equal to men and make morecontributions, but gender differences and women’s rights were ignored consciously orunconsciously.