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Steel Maiden At the end of the 1950s, during the years of the Great Leap Forward, steelmaking became a nationwide movement in China. “Iron,” as a symbol of strength and firmness, was endowed with a special political significance. In this atmosphere, the government promoted the ideal of the “steel maiden,” typified by women like Xing Yanzi, who left her comfortable city life to “eat bitterness” and labor work in the countryside for the revolutionary cause. The Chinese Communist Party widely publicized her stories. Song lyrics in her honor provided the justification: Xing Yanzi is an excellent role model . . . She labors to make grain grow from rocks She puts labor first and amusements last She labors only for the glory of the Party.1 The image of steel maiden forged meticulously in the official rhetoric encouraged Chinese women to bid farewell to femininity and do what had traditionally been done by men. The name “steel maiden” became a symbol of honor for members of female “shock teams” who hauled stones and wielded sledgehammers during the Great Leap Forward campaign in 1958. They were depicted in the popular imagination with certain characteristics: pigtails or short hair, broad shoulders, thick waists, loud voices, and blue uniforms. Strength and stamina came with a lively disposition. They cared little about their looks, and hid their individuality. Promoted along with the ideology of women’s emancipation, the steel maiden archetype mobilized Half the Sky: Mobility and Late Socialist Reflections Yan Lijun, with Yang Meijian and Taotao Zhang 10 Siu_10_ch10 1/19/11, 3:03 PM 237 Yan Lijun, with Yang Meijian and Taotao Zhang 238 wave after wave of Chinese women to join the front lines of industrial labor. The media frequently reported the glorious achievements of women working in male-dominated industries such as petroleum, bridge construction, coal mining, and fishing. In the 1960s and 1970s, while China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, women’s equality and empowerment gained a new momentum. “Women hold up half the sky” and “men and women are equal in the new revolutionary era” were two of the era’s most common gender equality tropes. In this atmosphere, a wealth of mythologies about women’s position in society sprang up. In the eight model Beijing operas praised highly in the official rhetoric, female revolutionary cadres hold up “half the sky” on the stage.2 In the Red Guard Movement, a large number of women came upon the political stage and exercised leadership over men in the revolution. It was popularly asserted that women in China no longer faced gender discrimination and that the country had pushed the position of women to new heights unknown throughout history. Women, it was believed, were perfectly equal to men and thus encouraged to do everything that men could do. Each era had its own language of women’s liberation, drawing on the language of labor and peasant mobilization. The steel maidens were part of this tradition. In the 1950s, the slogan was “women became the masters of the house,” and the Great Leap Forward exhorted women to “leave the home.” In the Red Guard Movement during the Cultural Revolution, women fully developed their ability to “hold up half the sky.” Scholars like Jin Yihong see the “steel maiden” and associated slogans as the most important conceptualization of gender equality in the 1960s and 1970s.3 Although political labels and slogans like these were intended to empower women, many scholars view the decades leading to and after the Cultural Revolution as an era which deprived women of their initiative and individuality.4 It was their labor and political commitment rather than their gendered selves that were exulted. The impact of these equality campaigns on the lives of women was mixed. In Li Huaiyin’s case study of the Qin Village in Jiangsu’s Dongtai County in 1977, the work teams had equal numbers of men and women. But according to one villager, the women completed “at least 70% of the team’s work.” In his words, “if it were not for the women, the work team would have been doomed.”5 On the other hand, Jin Yihong argued that women never received the same encouragement to participate in politics as men, noting that educated young men had the option of joining the army while women did not. Moreover, women only comprised 11% of students who were given educational opportunities based on the “worker-peasant-soldier” status.6 [18.221.165.246] Project...

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