The Economic Life of Peasant Women in Henan

THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF PEASANT WOMEN IN HENAN By Zhao Chun[l] (Translated by Dorothy Y. Ko) At present, the basic unit of agricultural production in Henan is still the family. The family is the basic unit in village economic organization. Moreover, due to the needs for tools and labor, the large family is a necessity. For in order to work the land one has to have at least the following items: two cows, a horse or a mule, a cart, a plough, a harrow, a drill barrow, and a few each of small tools such as the hoe and the fork. A family that can pay for all these has to cultivate about 100 mu of land. This takes at least four adult laborers. Any family that has four adults, together with women, the aged and the young, will be a large family with at least ten members. This is not to say that all peasant families in Henan have over ten people, but such is the most appropriate organization for agricultural production. This practical need has given rise to an ideal that the large family is a virtue. "The more hands gathering firewood, the higher is the flame," as the saying goes. In actuality, life in a large family is plagued with daily fights and mutual hostilities. They put up with it for the sake of economic efficiency. Brothers will not split off to form branch families until the latter is economically viable. There are two kinds of large families. In the poorest tenant families, only one adult male can afford a wife; both production and consumption in the family are strictly communal. A middling family, on the other hand, usually includes two or more women. Their productive and consuming activities are conducted in the main on the communal level, but supplemented by those on an individual level. In the latter case, all members of the family comprise a large economic unit with the patriarch holding economic power. At the same time, each couple makes up a miniature economic unit. In other words, when one woman is married into the family, another miniature unit is created. With regard to production, the entire fruits of the labor of male cultivators belong to the collective economy: so do services that consume the majority of the women's time such as harvesting, picking cotton, feeding pigs and chickens, cooking and so on. However, the women work on their individual production during slack seasons and at night. The fruits of these activities--weaving, for example--contribute to the miniature economic units. With regard to family consumption, the collective economy pays for taxes, gifts to other families, food and shelter. The miniature units supported by women, however, are responsible for clothing and nourishing babies. 68. In families too poor for each adult male to get married, sewing for the single men is shared by all women. The collective provides the cloth. Women are the each large family. centers of the miniature economic units within The sources of their income are as follows: 1) In poor peasant families, shortly after a wife enters the door, her mother-in-law gives her several catties of cotton. (This is called fenhua, earning a separate livelihood.) This becomes the initial capital for the newly-wed wife. In the time left over from communal labor, she "spins to earn thread, weaves to exchange for cotton." The clothing of her husband, herself, and their children are thus provided for. In some families, each year the collective economy subsidizes several catties of cotton to its members. 2) In rich peasant families, the collective economy is clearly differentiated from the miniature ones. The sources income in the latter are similar to those described in (1). more of 3) For small and middle landlords, not many of them keep large families for they do not have to cultivate the land. For those who do, the burdens of the women are similar to those in the above two cases. But they have more to spare. In addition to fenhua cotton, these women often have other sources of income, such as (a) gift money from her husband's relatives as well as from her...