Social Revolution and Woman’s Emancipation: China During the Great Leap Forward
Author(s)
Andors, Phylllis
Abstract
The problem of the relationship between social change and the role of women in society is of relatively recent emphasis. Where the problem has been analyzed in the past, serious ambiguities remain. Western liberal political theory has curiously been silent on the “woman question,” even though there is general agreement that the process of industrialization effects changes in the traditional patterns of the division of labor, one of which is the sexual division of labor that exists in every society. Even where it is acknowledged that economical development and cultural change have historically called upon women to fulfill roles outside the traditional maternal, home and family-centered ones, it is generally assumed that such roles will be passing phases or atypical patterns for an individual female life, since the existence of the family with functions as child-rearer and provider of services is never clearly questioned. Liberal theory has a view of female liberation completely compatible with the institutions of bourgeois society, and has never seriously confronted the implications of what female equality would entail for the family as an institution. Thus, it is able to accept the idea of women as individuals participating in the marketplace but is not able to comprehend women as a group being the equal of men as a group.
