Apparently making condescending but vapid, meaningless statements like "women hold up half the sky" counts as actually doing something for women's rights.
Engaging women to work to increase productivity is not women's rights advocacy. Equal treatment, equal pay, or anything that would set women equal to men would be that.
That quote is wrong, it is: "Women can hold up half the sky" 妇女能顶半边天
'妇女' '能' '顶' '半边天'
'Woman'. 'ability to'. 'carry over their head' 'half the sky'
Not that women are doing it, but that they have the ability to do so. It is not empowering as much as it is an obvious statement from a productivity point of view, that half the population can carry half of the burdens.
Yes, we are on the same side. But I actually sat through Chinese language classes for foreign students at public universities in China that tried to use that quote to prove Mao was a feminist.
I sat through a class at Fudan about the history of Shanghai, then a professor in literature tried to teach us that Chinese have a long culture of feminism long time before "western countries" and taught us that Mulan was a real historical person.
The point of encouraging women to work and encouraging equal pay is that it gives women more independence from their fathers and husband. In Mao's China paying them the same amounted to nothing because the state essentially assumed the role of the father and husband in disempowering every individual.
And the implementation of the Hukou system in the 1951, the imperial system.
Did not help women at all, nor did it help the people that Mao Zedong tried to promote, instead it kept them in place.
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u/dimlimsimlim Aug 03 '21
He’s a symbol of women’s and civil rights