| |
Decisions
of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Woman-work
at Present in the Countryside of the Liberated Areas (1948)
After keeping up the fight against the Japanese for eight years
the Chinese people finally defeated Japanese imperialism. Now they
have been fighting the People’s Liberation War for two and a half
years and have won unprecedentedly great victories. The reactionary
Kuomintang regime can basically be defeated in about another year.
These victories were gained by relying on the Party’s correct leadership,
the fighting skill of the People’s Liberation Army, and the bitter
struggles of the ordinary people. Women, who form half the population,
have played a big role and have become an indispensable force for
defeating the enemy and building a new China. Woman-work has been
especially successful since February 1943, when the Central Committee
issued ‘Decisions of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party on the present orientation of woman-work in all the anti-Japanese
base areas’. This gave a clear direction to woman-work in the liberated
areas, and where it was put into practice there were noticeable
changes in the work. Ordinary village women of the liberated areas
were further mobilised and organised to work in handicrafts, supplementary
enterprises, and agriculture, and to contribute to the war effort
with all their strength. In land reform all the liberated areas
mobilised even more women to take an active part in the sharing
out of land and the struggle to eliminate feudalism. In the districts
where land reform is already complete there has been a fundamental
change in class relations in the villages, land has been distributed
to both men and women, young and old, and quite a few women have
become district or village representatives, and have even been elected
village heads, deputy heads, or cadres above the village level.
Women have become much more aware and enthusiastic, and consequently
there has been a fundamental change in their political and economic
position and in their position in the family and in society, opening
the way to complete liberation.
...The whole party, all cadres engaged in woman-work,
and women activists must understand that under the New Democratic
Government, all the laws of the old society which constrained or
mistreated women and forced them into a humiliating position of
obedience have ceased to exist. The new laws guaranteeing absolute
equality of the sexes in the economy, in politics, and in society
have been formulated or basically formulated in the first period
of New Democratic power. The question is whether these laws can
truly be realised. The attitude of valuing men and despising women
handed down from the old society, all kinds of constraining feudal
customs, especially the economic dependence of women on men and
the handicaps of not excelling at all sorts of labour, and even
despising it, have obstructed the rapid realisation by women of
the rights already granted to them in law. So if women’s rights
are to be properly realised, the work must be done.
...As the land reform is completed, all problems connected
with women should be solved in accordance with the correct policies
of the local government and the directives for dealing with problems
left over from land reform, so as to confirm and increase women’s
enthusiasm for production. There must be government orders to guarantee
women’s rights to land. When the family is taken as a unit for issuing
land deeds, a note must be made on the deeds that the men and the
women have equal rights to land. Every member of the family has
democratic rights in the disposal of possessions. When necessary,
land deeds for women can be issued separately. At the same time
there should be a considerable period of publicity and education
for all peasants so that both men and women fully understand the
importance of protecting women’s rights to land.
...Step by step we must purposefully eliminate the
feudal thought, constraints, and customs which prevent women’s participation
in political, cultural and economic activities (of which the most
important is production). It should not be thought that once women
take part in production all the remnants of feudalism in society
which still constrain them will just naturally disappear and there
will be no need to do any more work. This way of just letting things
drift ignores the special interests of women and is erroneous. In
the course of production, at all mass meetings and in the mass organisations,
all peasants should be given constant ideological education on the
equality of the sexes; feudal thought, constraints, and customs
must be criticised, and it should be pointed out that all the feudal
customs constraining women must be eliminated. The small number
of backward elements who want to preserve old feudal customs and
who constantly oppress women must be suitably struggled against
where necessary. But it must be understood that this sort of struggle
is an ideological struggle amongst the peasants and should be radically
different from the class struggle against feudal landlords...
... In accordance with what is necessary to the development
of the present revolutionary situation, a large group of party and
non-party women cadres must be boldly educated and fully utilised
and pushed forward to take up posts of every sort and reinforce
the cadres in women’s organisations at every level. The same work
should be allocated and the same training and educational opportunities
given to men and women cadres of equal ability without discrimination.
Moreover, taking into account the special position of women cadres,
greater attention should be given to raising their political, theoretical,
and cultural levels and their ability at work. In order to assist
with their special difficulties, crêches and nurseries should be
set up and mutual-aid groups of women cadres should be organised
to care for children. This will not only lighten the burden of the
women cadres, it will also be a start in the nursery care of children
by society. The education of the new, labouring women cadres in
the villages, especially those who have already held posts before,
should be improved. They should be given patient training and steady
encouragement with special attention to increasing the number of
Party members. In the new liberated areas, pay special attention
to training local women cadres. All levels of Party schools and
training classes set up by the government should take in women cadres
as students according to a plan. Party organisations and propaganda
departments at all levels should include the teaching and training
of women cadres in their work. And the women cadres themselves under
the leadership and guidance of the Party ought to work with purpose
and enthusiasm, plunging really deeply into their work and becoming
more unified and more efficient. They should study theory, politics,
and general knowledge, and knowledge and skills connected with production
industriously, and should initiate criticism and self-criticism,
overcome their handicaps as women, resolutely seek to progress and
strengthen their ideal of serving the people. This is the basic
condition for turning oneself into a cadre valuable to the Party.
... The Party ought further to correct the feudal ideology
which values men and despises women that still survives both inside
and outside the Party, and to correct the negative idea of cutting
woman-work off from all other work, and the mistaken tendency to
do woman-work in an isolated, detached way. At all levels Party
organisations should intensify their study of Marxism-Leninism and
the thought of Mao Tse-tung and put it into practice more in the
way they do woman-work. They should cultivate a complete mass outlook
and get a correct grasp of the policy on the women’s movement and
should overcome lawlessness and anarchy in woman-work. Those who
do woman-work should seek truth from reality more often, go right
down amongst the masses, plunge into tough work, serve ordinary
women with all their hearts and wills and lead the women’s movement
forward.
|