Page 122 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

WOMEN’S POLITICAL WORK AND ‘WOMEN’S WORK’ 109
name of the Women’s Bureau (Funü bu). The Nationalist Party also has a Central
Women’s Work Directorate (Zhongyang funü gongzuo zhidao huiyi), which reports directly
to the Central Committee (Zhongyang weiyuanhui). Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party
(Minjin dang) similarly has established a women’s desk, called the Women’s Development
Bureau (Funü fazhan bu).

Why encourage women to work in politics?
The continued support for Women’s Departments, staffed by women and aimed at
mobilizing women, over an eighty-year period, suggests strong encouragement by both
political parties for women’s participation in formal and informal politics. However, as is
clear below, the support for Women’s Departments and the women working within these
Departments has a far broader range of functions within the various systems of governance
during this period than simple support for women’s employment in politics.
From the outset, within both political machines, women’s work was aimed at
harnessing the energies of ordinary women for party building and implementing party
policy among women. The parties’ needs were paramount and the Women’s
Departments, as creatures of the party structures, were called upon to serve the parties’
needs. Women’s rights were instrumental but not the prime focus. Women’s liberation
was sought but it was not the ultimate goal of the Women’s Departments. Women were
encouraged to work in politics through ‘women’s work’ in order to assist in strengthening
the CCP or the Nationalist Party
From the point of view of the early CCP leadership, women’s liberation from
patriarchal oppression was seen as an important reason for encouraging women to work in
politics. But this feminist sentiment was not sufficient in itself. It is clear that communist
leaders saw women as potentially useful in the campaign to build the strength of the
fragile CCP. To this end, women of all classes were a distinct constituency that could be
converted to the CCP cause within the rubric of women’s liberation (Goodman 2000).
Bourgeois women’s groups could be harnessed to the communist; they would bring with
them a wealth of organizational knowledge and networks that would potentially benefit
the CCP cause as well. Women peasants could be mobilized to support the military
campaigns by relieving their husbands of farm work and facilitating the menfolk enlisting
in the army. Moreover, women had become accepted and widely understood symbols of
‘oppression’ and the ‘potential for liberation’ as a result of the May Fourth Movement—
so the CCP consciously used the ‘symbolic woman’ to mobilize men to the CCP cause as
well. Nicola Spakowski has argued that women featured prominently in recruitment
drives for the People’s Liberation Army—the military wing of the CCP—primarily because
the image of women soldiers on the posters would shame men into enlisting. The goal
was not to recruit women soldiers (Spakowksi 2002).
Women’s liberation was not the sole focus of the work, rather the intent of these
various Women’s Departments was to harness women to enhance the national revolution
and later the communist revolution. The twin focuses of the Women’s Departments in
the Nationalist Party is also clear from the resolution emerging from the second national
congress of the Party on January 16 1926: ‘While leading women in joining the national