Page 123 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

110 LOUISE EDWARDS
revolution, the Party should pay special attention to women’s own emancipation’ (Min
1995:503–4). At the same time, the CCP in particular was keen to avoid alienating men,
who were little interested in women’s liberation—in part because they were directly
addressing a wider cross-section of the Chinese population than the Nationalists by
targeting peasants and not only the modernized urbanities. The establishment of a separate
department could create the impression that women’s business would remain contained
as women’s business and not spill over into the broader social and political scene.
Once the CCP’s control over China had stabilized, women were no longer required for
their potential to build the Party. Rather, we see a role for women politicians emerging as
disseminators of party policies on women and social change. In New China, women’s
work was the mobilization of women for CCP social and economic agenda. This resulted
in the fluctuation of policies on women as the overall thrust of CCP policies for China
changed. In the 1950s women were encouraged to work in paid employment external to
the home, but by the early 1980s women were encouraged to leave the workforce and go
‘back to the wok’ (Jacka 1990). Population planning has similarly shifted from being pro-
natalist in the 1950s to being anti-natalist, culminating in the One-Child Family Policy
instituted in the late 1970s (White 1994). Women politicians in the PRC have presided
over each of these policy shifts as political wives to the male party machine.
In the twenty-first century, a new imperative for women’s political work has emerged.
Women’s political engagement performs vital rhetorical functions within the justification
and legitimization of socialism as the underpinning political economy of the nation-state.
This view espouses the notion that women’s engagement in politics is a prerequisite to a
socialist society and one of a socialist society’s founding principles. Women’s participation
in politics is central to the Maoist notion that ‘women hold up half the sky’ (Ye Zhonghai
2000:208). Moreover, women’s continued work in politics in the PRC is presented
as demonstrating the superiority of this national political structure. In 2000, Ye Zhonghai,
researcher on women in leadership in China, argued that in a socialist society women are
able to participate in politics in a more complete sense than women constrained by private
property and class in non-socialist societies (Ye Zhonghai 2000:208). Thus, women’s
work is still valuable to the party in the twenty-first century—it serves to demonstrate the
superiority of the current political and economic order—and for these reasons continues
to win Party support.
In addition, recent advocates of enhanced women’s political participation have pointed
out that leadership processes will be improved and Party functioning made more effective
if women are included in the leadership structure. Sun Changzhi argued that women’s
political participation ensured that the Party maintains close relations with the masses—
since women make up half of the population (Sun Chengzhi 1989). The logic of this
argument is that women politicians bring a female perspective to leadership that would
enable the CCP to connect with the bulk of women citizens. The CCP’s interest in not
being isolated from the population it leads is paramount in this argument.
The PRC government is also keen to adhere to international standards in relation to
women’s engagement with politics as part of the effort to enhance China’s international
reputation and integrate the PRC into the global political economy. Ye Zhonghai pointed
out that developing strong numbers of women in politics would serve to build China’s