Content area
Abstract
This study is concerned with transitional gender roles and relations, illuminated through an examination of the status of women in China from the Mao era to the post-Mao era. The study reveals that the socialist state has maintained a high degree of control over gender construction in order to legitimize its historical achievement of revolution and liberation, assuming given gender identities within the official discourse of socialism. Liberation from the core philosophy Confucianism in which human role relations are cultivated and developed within a male-centered world. Consequently, this discourse opens up an authoritative normalisation process that hinders women's progress in the state, in the household and in organisations. Women's new identity involves aspects of biologically given features, internalisation of the patriarchal family and social relations. Collective relational construction therefore emphasises the feminine/maternal principles of identity, denouncing separation and independence. This phenomenon seems to be pushing the whole of gender politics in China back towards more traditional sex role differences and power imbalances. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]