Page 177 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

164 ANNE E.MCLAREN
unpaid but essential work for the family came to be perceived by Chinese reformers,
foreign observers, and increasingly by women themselves, as a site of seclusion and
dependence (Bray 1997:263).
Women’s perceived lack of skill to perform remunerated labour was regarded as a
social problem by leading reformers such as Liang Qichao (1873–1929) (Ono 1989:
26–8). Attempts were made to encourage women to work outside the home for the
benefit of the nation. Visual media such as ‘New Year prints’ (illustrations of traditional
images and motifs circulating in villages) exhorted women to take part in the national
‘Self-strengthening’ movement. One such print alludes to women’s physical ‘weakness’
but nonetheless calls on women to stop sitting around idly, relying on men for their daily
food (McIntyre 1999:67–8, 76 fig. 6). Another print urges women to work together in a
cottage textile industry. As Tanya McIntyre points out, this print is denuded of the usual
‘domestic features’, such as children, flowers, doorways and windows (1999: 67–9, 76
fig. 7), thus implying a ‘modern’ setting for the working woman. Another curious print
of the same era has women, tottering on bound feet, lining up with rifles in military
formation (McIntyre 1999:64–5, 75).
Women’s bound feet were the most obvious impediment to the emergence of women
in the emerging modern workforce, but traditional notions of ‘women’s work’ were
another serious burden (see also Edwards, this volume). It is important to note that the
dominance of the inner/outer model of labour did not mean that women never
participated in ‘outer’ work, only that this sphere was not seen as natural to them. Young
women and girls in Guangdong in the 1920s, for example, were commonly responsible for
cultivating gardens close to the house, for the care of poultry and pigs, for pounding and
grinding rice, selling produce at the market, assisting with bringing in the harvest, the
raising of silkworms, spinning, weaving and sewing (Kulp 1925, repr. 1966:252–3).
Women’s work remained crucial for the production of labour-intensive handicrafts,
although, as Gates notes, this labour was ‘nearly invisible’ in the written record (1997:
122). In agricultural production, it was men who carried out most of the heavy fieldwork.
For example, John Buck, who surveyed a number of regions in China during the 1920s,
found a low participation of women in fieldwork in northern wheat regions and a slightly
6
higher rate in rice regions (Jacka 1997:23; Mann 2000:27). In the nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the notion that it was shameful for women to engage in paid work
outside the home precluded all but the poorest class of women from seeking work in
western-style textile mills in urban areas (Huang 1990:176; Hershatter 1986). After the
founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the government sought to transform the
traditional notion that women should not perform remunerated work outside the home.
However, as many commentators have noted, government views were dominated by
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broad national concerns rather than specific goals to achieve women’s emancipation. The
result is a certain inconsistency in official encouragement for women to work outside the
home. As Jacka has argued (1997:31), when ‘left-wing’ policy called the tune, women
were urged to engage in non-domestic, remunerated labour. However, governments of a
more ‘right-wing’ tendency were more concerned with providing employment
opportunities for men than with encouraging women’s participation in remunerated
labour. 8