Page 125 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

112 LOUISE EDWARDS
from the 1920s. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that recent interest by PRC scholars to
incorporate the women’s suffrage movement in CCP history serves to create a
teleological line connecting the CCP of the 1920s with the democratizing CCP of the
1990s and 2000s (Edwards 2002). Nonetheless, as is shown clearly in the tables
accompanying this chapter outlining women’s political participation in a range of state and
Party bodies, the situation is not improving for women even though the general levels of
democratization in the country are improving.
Not all arguments mobilized for increasing the numbers of women working in politics
are framed within the interests of the state or Party There are assertions that improving
women’s participation in politics is important because of the benefits that women
politicians could garner for women citizens. As Chen Muhua, China’s top woman
politician of the early reform period, noted in a speech to the ACFW (which she led),
‘Women must become involved in politics. Or else nobody will speak on your behalf’
(Jiang Tiantian 1990:4). Similarly, Ye Zhonghai noted that women’s participation in
politics is part of the path to a more complete liberation based on the four principles of
‘self-respect, self-belief, self-reliance and self-improvement’ (zizun, zixin, zili, ziqiang).
The ACFW has promoted these ‘Four Selfs’ among women since the 1990s in line with
the dismantling of state support and protection for women (Edwards 2000: 67). Ye’s
argument is that women’s engagement with politics provides women with the space
within which they can exercise their rights as citizens.
At each point in the evolution of the rationale for women’s engagement with politics,
the CCP asserts the importance of women’s liberation for its own sake. However,
women’s liberation has always been constrained within the overarching political needs of
the CCP—be they strategic, military, economic or moral. Antagonistic, anti-patriarchal
feminism is curtailed within these notions of women’s political work by assertions of CCP
interest and national benefit.

Problems of ‘women’s work’ for women working in politics
The highly unified and homogeneous nature of formal politics for women within the PRC
has resulted in numerous problems for women’s political representation and in career
limitations for women working in the political arena. These current problems have their
origin in the conceptualization and institutionalization of ‘women’s work’ over the course
of the first half of the twentieth century. However, as was made clear in the section above,
broad and evolving contemporary political needs are being met by the structures of
‘women’s work’ that prevent improvements being made. What are the major problems?
The presentation of ‘women’s work’ as the only legitimate avenue for women’s
participation in politics has resulted in the silencing of women’s feminist activism. The
cooption of the women’s associations into Party organs as early as the 1920s ultimately
saw the women’s associations being neutralized by Party discipline and Party patriarchy.
In this context, activists involved in ‘women’s work’ ultimately were addressing questions
of women’s mobilization. The problem of women’s oppression by men was perceived by
many in the Nationalist Party as likely to be solved as a direct consequence of the success
of the national revolution to unify the country and control the warlords. In the CCP, a clear