Chairman Mao Research Paper

Words: 914
Pages: 4

The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao influenced greatly on the status of women in China. He appeared in favour of women uprising as he said, ‘women hold up half of the sky’, despite having grown up in a patriarchal society where they followed rules of the San Gang, it was not until the incident in Changsha that Mao say the problems of the marriage system in China, where he determined condemned marriages as ‘indirect rape’ and believed that women had been ‘relegated to the dark corner of society’. He therefore set up marriage reforms which enhanced the status of women, such as the abolishment of concubinage, discontinuing of arranged marriages, bride prices were forbidden and women who had been previously forced to marry were entitles to divorce their partners, which led to all marriages having to be officially recorded and registered. However, women becoming more independent and the society relying on them meant that Mao used and patronised women and became somewhat of a …show more content…
In 1950, the marriage reform was introduced, which abolished arranged marriages and wives could initiate divorce as well as buy and sell properties. This granted much more independence for women and they began to have more rights. The most notable was the easy access to abortion which wiped out prostitution, and the focus on women’s reproductive health resulted in improved training of the midwives. However, soon enough in 1957 women lost the independence that land reform had given them, but this time they were less vulnerable as they could fall back on community support. Albeit having a significant change in the status and role of women during the first years of Mao’s rule, his policies were only noticeable in the larger, urban areas; the rural society which composed the majority of Chinese society saw little change as women were still treated as a man’s