Of Women and Washing Machines: Employment, Housework, and the Reproduction of Motherhood in Socialist China

Abstract

Biology is not supposed to be destiny in socialist China. In contrast to class societies where supposedly “men occupy the position of the ruling class… and women become the household slaves of men and the instruments for producing more men,” in China men and women together are said to hold up the sky (biantian). Women are no longer enslaved by reproduction; if they are oppressed, it is merely because remnants of feudal thinking, superstition and backwardness still exist in China. Or so it is argued by representatives of the Chinese leadership. Here I will posit a different view. Rather than blaming feudalism or China's lack of development, I suggest that contemporary political and economic decisions have reinforced sex inequality in China. In this article, I argue that social and economic policies since the Third Plenum of the llth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party have created conditions which impose on women (and men) sex-differentiated roles in production and reproduction. These new public policies sustain the traditional definition of women as household labourers and reproducers of men.