Rethinking the “Iron Girls”:Gender and labor in China during the Cultural Revolution

Describing the women' s participation in the social labor during 1950s-1980s, this paper analyzes how the state mobilization and the political intervention influenced the forming of new feminine labor roles.Under the intervention from the state policy , an adjustive mode for planning labor, which makes the women as the first level pool and the peasants as the second , has, during this period, gradually formed.Compared with the mode of industrial reserve within the planned economy , this pool-like mechanism , however, showed the characteristic of compulsion more obviously.Companied with this situation , it is the “ de-genderised” in the Chinese gender division of labor, which form the character that the field of women' s occupation expanded continuously and mixed with the men' s gradually.This article focuses on the period of Culture Revolution (1968- 1976), for during this period, powerful political mobilization made the character of “ degenderised” to the acme.The mode of “men to work and women to farm” in Daqing and the “ Iron girls” are the two typical modes of gender division in labor, which were pushed in this period.In this paper, the influence of these tow models to the feminine labor will be analyzed .The new labor roles had, to the mobilized Chinese women , the positive and negative influences .

金一虹；

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