Women's Freedom during China's Revolutionary Period

Women's Freedom during China's Revolutionary Period

During the revolutionary period in China from 1921 to 1934, although there were undercurrents of an actual feminist movement, according to Kay Ann Johnson in Women, the Family & Peasant Revolution in China, women’s progress resulted more as a necessity of the war than the leadership’s commitment to emancipate women. Furthermore, when tension arose between men and women, the leadership usually appeased men over women. By not discussing the mentality of the political parties and the dynamics of the war, Hughes and Hughes’ critique lacks an explanation of the underlying motives that drove these parties to sometimes support women and other times reject women’s interests. Hughes and Hughes explain that “male educators and members of the KMT now proclaimed Chinese women emancipated” (H&H 237). However, Johnson’s critique paints quite a different and more complex emancipation.

The philosophies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reflected undertones of feminist thought and consideration. The CCP’s ideology developed in the early twentieth century as a result of a radical intellectual movement in urban areas composed of disillusioned students and professors. The CCP did recognize women’s progressive demands and desires for equal rights. In 1922, at the Second National Congress, the Party established the Women’s Department which aided women’s revolutionary political activity (Johnson 41). The Manifesto of the Second Congress responded to women’s groups such as the Woman Suffrage Alliance and the Alliance for the Women’s Rights Movements by including objectives such as “the limited right to vote for all workers and peasants, regardless of sex, [and] protect...

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...ower in the war. Thus, it is difficult to assess whether women did attain emancipation since emancipation under such a politically charged atmosphere seems rather tainted. In addition, when conflict arose between men and women, politics usually supported male interests. Hughes and Hughes do not fully illustrate the complex motives that drove these parties to either support or abandon women’s interests in order to maintain political unity. Thus, it is problematic to only read Hughes and Hughes critique because it lacks an in-depth discussion of the complex dynamics during the revolution.

Works Cited

Hughes, Sarah Shaver and Brady Hughes. Women in World History: Readings from 1500

to the Present. Vol 2. New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1997.

Johnson, Kay Ann. Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China. Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1983.