Women’s studies programs in China are focused less on political goals, such as agitation for gender equality, than they were in the United states during the early 1970s. The focus in China has been more on the academic task of what scholars term discipline building. Chinese women’s studies and women’s movement are certainly influenced by western feminism, as the result of increased contact between women there and the outside world, through both official and unofficial means. As China entered the 1990s, women’s studies expanded more rapidly and acquired a more critical edge.
Women’s Self Perception And Consciousness
The rise of women’s subjectivity and their consciousness of themselves as a social category, and an independent group, is both an objective and a consequence of the current women’s movement.
Chinese women realize that equality on paper cannot actually mean actual equality. Thus, women learn to rely on themselves for their emancipation. Some scholars argue that the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) top down approach has resulted in women’s dependence on society for the delivery of rights and benefits.
It is interesting to observe that, while some western scholars focus their criticism on the CCP’s approach to the women’s question as creating public patriarchy, Chinese criticism is targeted at women themselves. The ACWF (All China Women’s Federation) developed a “four-self” slogan (self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement) based on the assumption that women’s own weaknesses prevent them from becoming full members of society.
During the cultural revolution, the first model depicted as “iron girls” was the dominant norm. Today, the superwoman who is capable of performing three roles: well-worker, wife and mother, is still promoted by the majority of Chinese women scholars as the ideal model for women’s development.
Urban/rural dichotomy exists as a critique and weakness of the current urban-based women’s movement where rural women’s experiences and voices have not been well articulated.