Economic Reform

Following Mao’s death in 1978, his successor initiated massive economic reform in the PRC. Declaring China to be at an earlier stage of socialism than had previously been thought, Deng Xiaoping introduced the logic of the market as the new guide for economic policy. His official party line of the “Four Modernizations” (agriculture, industry, national defense and science and technology) introduced in 1978 marked the beginning of new problems and new possibilities for Chinese women. Life tenure for workers or the “iron rice bowl” policy ended in many industries, meaning, that for the first time in decades, workers could lose their jobs. Private ownership took over many industries and factories closed which were not profitable. Communal farming ended in rural areas with the nuclear family being designated as the primary economic unit. In these rural areas small industry developed on the side. Yet, women became ghettoized in low paying agricultural work. Further, this emphasis on the nuclear family resurrected past Confucian ideals of the good woman and reintroduced oppressive marriage practices to these rural areas.

Urban women experienced a different set of problems. First, with a logic of productivity and profit now guiding the workplace, women workers were often the first people to bear the brunt of economic reform. Many employers argued that women, as childbearers, were an economic liability. They required more leave time and as such, were seen as less efficient. Women disproportionately were laid off and new women graduates had a much harder time locating employment than their male counterparts. Prostitution, the selling of brides and other manifestations of the “traffic in women” became more prevalent. Many individuals, both men and women, advocated that women return to the home to clear the way for men’s employment, in other words, remove themselves to control surplus labor problems. Other women whose families prospered from the economic development, returned to the home “voluntarily,” exhausted by the double burden of paid employment and an unequal division of labor in the home.

In light of these serious dilemmas facing Chinese women, what possibilities does economic reform create (in addition to the opportunities for entrepreneurship, which are not given significant attention in this literature)? Mentioned frequently is that China’s “open door policy” for “modernization” paved the way for the admittance of Western feminism and Women’s Studies into China. Its appearance is not without conflict, and with good reason, given the history of Western imperialism in China. Additionally, there is a long history of understanding Western feminism as bourgeois individualism and criticizing movements for women’s rights as subversive of communist revolution. Unpacking Western feminism in China is a gnarly task. In many places, Western feminism appears overly monolithic, meaning, the tensions within Western feminism are not acknowledged or are downplayed. Further, academic Women’s Studies scholars seem much more open to Western feminism than members of the ACWF, creating an uneven platform for dialogue. The tension inherent in this situation provides possibilities for re-examining feminism cross-culturally.

Infrequent, but present in this literature, Women’s Studies is seen as part of a larger push for democracy in contemporary China. This too is a complicated matter which involves the examination of the relationship between women’s self-reflection and emergent collective consciousness, the history of building oneself for the greater good, and the rise of the ideology of individualism concurrent with capitalist development.