Facing Demographic Crisis, China Pushes Women Back Into the Home

Speaking at the 13th National Congress of Chinese Women on October 30, Xi said China must actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing. Lu Pin, a Chinese feminist activist living in the U.S. and working on her doctorate in women and politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told VOA Mandarin that in China, the family is considered a building block for national stability and that the government now sees women as the stabilizing center of each family. Lu said many women have responded to the constraints on feminism through a kind of passive resistance that has contributed to the demographic crisis. Wu Weiting, director of the Institute of Gender Research at Taiwan Shih Hsin University, told VOA Mandarin that when the Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, it encouraged women to be independent as part of its revolt against the prevailing feudal ethics. Founding Chairman Mao Zedong encouraged women to join the workforce, saying, "Whatever men comrades can accomplish, women comrades can too." He famously proclaimed, "Women hold up half the sky." She said the party's push for multiple children drove women out of the workplace and the public sphere and back home. Wu sees the CCP's move to return women to more traditional roles as a continuation of its crackdown on gender rights defenders, especially on women's rights organizations, which began after Xi came to power in 2014 and began strengthening the party's social control.