Introduction

Since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, Mao Zedong adopted various social reforms that shifted gender relations, with the 1950 Marriage Law distinguished as one of the earliest radical policies to recognize women’s rights. This was a significant change from the decades of instability leading up to 1949 China, including the collapse of the Qing dynasty and a civil war between Communists and Nationalists (“The Chinese Revolution of 1949”). Women’s lives were predominantly subordinated through legal and cultural codes established during Imperial China––arranged marriages, concubinage, and exclusion from property rights. The promulgation of the Marriage Law marked a pivotal legislative attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to dismantle centuries of entrenched patriarchal structures. Deviating from Confucian values that historically governed women in Imperial China, the Marriage Law sought to redefine marriage as a voluntary decision grounded on equality and eliminate legal inequalities women face by criminalizing forced marriages, banning concubinage, and granting women’s right to divorce, property, and labor. This essay investigates the question “To what extent did Mao's Marriage Law during the early years of communist rule in 1949-1955 create positive social change for women compared to Imperial China?”  Defining positive social change is simple: the progress towards advancing women’s rights. Imperial China used for comparison, because Imperialistic values reflected the restrictive Confucian ideologies that Mao sought to overturn. While Nationalist movements advocated against gender restrictions since Imperial China, it was rooted in similar Confucian ideologies; comparing the Marriage Law with Imperial China more clearly captures the law’s success at dismantling deeply rooted patriarchal norms. The effectiveness of the Marriage Law is subject to historiographical debate; some scholars view the law as a positive feminist revolution, while others argue it imposed greater burdens on women while neglecting women in rural areas. Investigating Mao’s approach interrogates the dual functions of governance: genuinely advancing marginalized groups and consolidating political authority through utilizing support from a historically disenfranchised group.

 

By analysing the conditions of the Marriage Law, communist propaganda, and writers’ testimonies, this essay contends that Mao’s Marriage Law created positive social change for women to a significant extent compared to Imperial China by discarding restrictive Confucian values and granting rights to work and property; however, its full impact was limited by resistance within rural areas and the potential cynical attempt of Mao to consolidate political power than women’s emancipation. 

 

Methodology

This paper employs both primary and secondary sources to assess the law’s significance in advancing women’s rights. A translated version of the original Marriage Law is the foundational primary source. Effectively, this source offers direct insight into the state’s legal intentions. However, as a translated document, nuances of Chinese terminology may lose contextual significance or carry different connotations in English. Regardless, this issue is easily mitigated through cross-referencing with secondary sources that speak about the law’s general provisions. The precise wording of the document is less important than the broader ideas they convey. Additionally, given it is a legislative document, it reflects idealistic objectives rather than realities of enforcement. The paper also analyzes CCP propaganda of the early 1950s. These visual materials are valuable for understanding the nature of state messaging, particularly given China’s vast rural population and low literacy rates of the early 1950s, making propaganda a prevalent and digestible form of information. Similar to government documents, these posters often present aspirational images that obscure the persistence of patriarchal resistance, limiting their reliability as representations of women’s lived experiences. The final category of primary sources is commentary from figures during the law’s enactment––such as CCP official Chang Chih Jang, feminist writer Ding Ling, and CCP chairman Mao Zedong himself––analyzing their perspectives and evaluating claims. Secondary sources mostly consist of contemporary research papers, including Neil Diamant's examination of the Marriage Law in rural villages or Gail Hershatter's long trajectory of women's experiences in 20th century China. Combining viewpoints, secondary sources are used to distinguish idealized and propagandized claims with realistic outcomes. Although these sources may lose nuance of the experiential knowledge compared to those alive during the law’s enactment, these sources retrospectively analyze the law, resulting in a more unbiased assessment of implementation gaps. 

 

Background

Prior to Mao, womanhood in China was dominated by the Confucian social rhetoric that emerged during Imperial China, which imposed rigid patriarchal hierarchies under the guise of morality. Traditions like foot binding, which historically impacted around 50% of all women and up to 100% in upper class societies, exemplified the physical control over women’s bodies. Concubinage and arranged marriages denied them of divorce or property rights (Qin et al.). These social norms persisted for centuries, dominating different Imperial dynasties up until the nationalist period during the pre-Mao era. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, Mao employed a social constructivist rhetoric, which emphasizes that gender roles are shaped by societal expectations rather than innate biological differences (Yang). The Marriage Law addressed this rhetoric by dismantling preconceived expectations and restraints on women’s social freedom in order to redefine them as equal participants in both family life and services to the nation. In his inaugural speech as chairman, the famous slogan “[w]omen hold up half the sky” reflects this ideological shift, where women were seen as equally capable contributors to Chinese society (Du). However, this policy also drew a distinction between female empowerment and the utility of gender reform for political power. Mao’s social norms for women are based on a political agenda called state feminism: the mobilization of women as empowered citizens of the socialist state (Yang). While the law presented legal rights for women, the intentions in which he advanced them were intertwined with the idea of mobilizing women’s support. Because of Mao's ambiguous intentions behind feminist approaches, this topic left decades of debate with regards to the true significance of the law.

 

The Structure of Marriage

Some of the most overt changes of the Marriage Law were the new legal standards that freed women from oppressions within the Confucian family structure, outlawing arranged marriages, granting women the right to divorce, and other protections against patriarchal authority. In 1927, Mao led a 32-day survey to understand the revolutionary potential of peasantry in the Hunan province (Mao). He pointed out that women were bound by four powers; three of these powers belong to the state, the divine, and the clan, while the fourth power was control of their husbands (Mao). Central to these values was the Three Obediences doctrine, whereby a woman was expected to obey her father before marriage, husband during marriage, and sons if widowed (Wen). This institutionalized a woman’s subordination at all life stages, making male authority inescapable in familial settings. Similarly, the Four Virtues doctrine labelled chastity, modesty in speech, neatness of appearance, good needlework, and cooking as essential qualities for women to cultivate (Wen). These doctrines collectively functioned as codes of patriarchal control in both private and public perceptions of womanhood. Marriages were arranged between families, often at a young age, resulting in the widespread practice of child marriage. These arrangements were secured through bride prices, where the groom’s family would pay the bride’s family a sum of money or goods to commodify the bride (Lu). Likewise, concubinage allowed men to legally keep multiple women as secondary partners, many of whom are from poorer backgrounds or the extended family of the wife (Tran). Compared to the dire social conditions––such as forced marriages or restrictive social doctrines––of China during dynastic rule, the Marriage Law’s articles significantly alleviated the legal abuses of women’s rights, allowing them to create marital relations with mutual consent. 

 

The statements in the Marriage Law significantly dismantled Confucian marriage systems, granting women greater protection and autonomy in legal relationships. In Article 1 of the Marriage Law, the institution declared a “new democratic marriage system” based on “free choice of partners, monogamy, equal rights for both sexes, and protection of the lawful interests of women and children” (Wang). The practical implications were significant: the legalization of free marriage and divorce while undermining the authority of extended kinship networks. From its enactment on May 1st, 1950 to 1953, divorces reached a peak of 1.17 million (Zeng et al.). This surge illustrates women’s newly asserted rights to dissolve family hierarchies in a feudal system, suggesting drastic social progress towards empowering female autonomy. Further, in Article 2, the law prohibited “[p]olygamy, concubinage, child betrothal, interference with the re-marriage of widows and the exaction of money or gifts in connection to marriage” (Wang). Each of these prohibitions targeted a specific element of the Confucian family model. For instance, banning child betrothal addresses the vulnerability of prepubertal girls in arranged unions. As opposed to the feudal marriage models, the law established an egalitarian model, which consists of mutually sharing obligations in relationships. Consequently, Imperial patriarchal practices were dismantled, laying the groundwork for wider social change that can liberalize women’s roles in both the family and society at large. 

 

This argument is endorsed by Chang Chih-jang, one of Communist China’s legal experts (“The Consul General at Peiping (Clubb) to the Secretary of State”). He  indicated that abolishing feudal marriage customs and introducing a democratic marriage system is a “basic principle that runs the whole structure of the law” (Wang). He claimed that the legal provisions for marriage reform existed during the time of warlords and later under the Guomindang; however, the ruling class prioritized elitist economic interests over the needs of the people, leaving marriage-related issues unaddressed. Chang explained that the chief aim of the law is to set women “free from the bondage imposed upon them by the old system” and “promot[ing] mutual aid and love” (Wang).  While Chang’s perspective strongly reinforces the party’s perceived commitment, his position must be understood as one that idealizes the CCP’s vision of marriage reform, meaning outlined aims of gender equality may not be fully exercised in practice. Regardless, this source is valuable for illustrating the ideological intent of the Marriage Law as a departure from Confucian household structures. 

 

The CCP outlawing unjust marital practices offered women noteworthy protection under the Marriage Law, dismantling deeply ingrained feudal hierarchies. This shift towards advancing women’s autonomy supports the argument that the Marriage Law created positive social change to a significant extent. 

 

Ownership and Labour Rights

Outside of relationships, the Marriage Law cultivated positive social change through legal parity of the family in property and occupation matters. Since dynastic rule, women were barred from legally owning property; land inheritance was passed strictly through the male line (Tran). Widows, though occasionally entrusted with managing household property, were regarded as temporary stewards of properties until sons came of age to exercise custodial responsibilities (Tran). Limited employment opportunities further entrenched women’s dependence. For example, investments in girls’ education were deemed wasteful because all women were presumed to enter household careers. Up until age nine, girls may receive similar education as boys; however, at age ten, girls were expected to shift their education on the Three Obediences and Four Virtues doctrines, making women’s education inaccessible (Lee). Beginning in the Song dynasty (10th century), foot binding traditions, initially perceived as a symbol of beauty, impeded women’s abilities to perform mobility-dependent tasks and led women to exclusively perform tasks within the house (Smith). Combining the restrictions imposed on inheritance rights, education, and mobility, Imperial China created a system in which women were economically dependent and excluded from public life at large.

 

To counteract these Imperialistic norms, the Marriage Law also implemented clauses relating to the legal rights women have over living conditions and social contributions. Under new clauses, the husband and wife are deemed as equal companions with equal opportunities to contribute to social work, such as joining education programs, farming, or general labour collectives. In article 7, the law states that both the husband and wife “are companions living together and have equal status in the home”, and article 9 indicates that both should “have the right to free choice of occupation and free participation in society” (Wang). These declarations had two notable implications: acknowledging women’s presence as legal individuals and women’s relevance for cultivating societal growth. These provisions directly challenged preconceived values of women’s unconditional obedience and private labour, instead positioning them as autonomous citizens entitled to public engagement. In Figure 1, a propaganda poster, designer Xin Liliang portrays a group of women proactively contributing to agricultural production. 

 

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Figure 1: 1953 Propaganda poster from the Chinese Communist Party - “New view in rural village,” (Xin).

 

This source is valuable because it highlights the Marriage Law’s role in integrating women into social work for the betterment of the Chinese economy, a significant step to legally free women from constraining familial duties. Additionally, because propaganda posters are produced and circulated by the Chinese government, it likely raised great awareness for women’s emancipation, encouraging public acceptance of reforms. However, because it is authored by the CCP, the poster is limited because of its selective presentation, solely emphasizing positive developments while concealing potential challenges. This means the source does not provide a holistic evaluation of women’s lived experiences. Even considering this limitation, secondary accounts cite the short-term social impacts of the law, stating that women represented 40% of the workforce in 1950 and, in 1957, 70% of the female labour force took part in agricultural production (Lu). This suggests that the Marriage Law was still significant for providing women entry into social participation in areas that were restricted during Imperial rule. 

 

The law also provided long-term social change for women in China in terms of education and leadership. During the 1950s, there was an expansion of accessible education resources and the normalization of women’s education (Eyferth). While education was not mandated by the Marriage Law, the newly developed feminist autonomy allowed women to take fuller advantage of education as it was made available. Women were then encouraged to train for jobs formerly held exclusively by men, and nurseries were established for women to obtain relevance in the reconstruction of China’s economic influence. Although the immediate surges in employment began slowly, it soon grew as China began pursuing ambitious industrial projects like the First Five Year Plan (1953-57) and the Great Leap Forward (1958-62). For instance, evidence for participation in agricultural labour shows that in the Shaanxi province, the average woman worked less than ten days in 1955, while in 1959, that number increased up to 200 days (Eyferth). Notably, women’s improved social status in labour and education also increased their long-term participation in political leadership. Female representation in the National People’s Congress grew from 147 representatives in 1954 to 543 in 1964, with female cadres in local governments of all levels (Guo and Zhao).

 

Through legitimizing women’s rights to their own property, education, and engagement in public fields, the law was significant in promoting positive social change, laying the foundational framework for women’s active participation in China’s economic reconstruction. 

 

The Urban-Rural Divide

Despite the provisions outlined by CCP publications, the Marriage Law faced limitations in rural China, where cultural traditions in minority regions hindered the law’s relevance. Rural provinces, such as Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang, prioritized the Confucian family structure over national law, allowing local patriarchs to assert control over marriage decisions (Clemens). This is primarily due to the lack of CCP cadres in geographically remote regions, leading to limited state interventions. As a result, rural provinces commonly saw bride kidnapping: the abduction of women for forced marriage (Diamant). More frequently, rural women seeking to divorce or choose their own husbands were often beaten or intimidated into arranged marriages (Zeng et al.). A secondary account from the China Quarterly stated that “[w]omen who sought to divorce on the basis of the Marriage Law” realized that “there was no state institution willing to help them” (Diamant). Given that both marriages and divorces then needed to be officially consulted with and approved by a party cadre, rural women, most of whom are inexperienced or illiterate, had difficulties navigating this roadblock (Diamant). Consequently, rural regions were subject to a greater saturation of Imperial ideologies, resulting in the continuity of patriarchal hierarchies that diminished the practical impact of the Marriage Law.

 

The law’s enforcement was particularly weak for religious communities. A CIA report about the CCP’s attempts at governing Chinese Muslim minorities stated that the provisions of the law in Articles 1 and 2 “strike at many facets” of Muslim marriage practices, such as polgamy, parent-arranged marriages, and child betrothal (“Islam in Communist China”). As opposed to viewing the law as an effective way to bolster women’s social status, Muslim communities stated that this aspect of the Communist policy “disrupt[ed] the traditional family relationship,” and if implemented long enough, would “result in the absorption of the [Muslim] communities” (“Islam in Communist China”). This demonstrates how the Marriage Law was poorly implemented in rural regions entrenched in Imperial norms, and its provisions were seen as an existential threat to these communities. Thus, the Imperial social statuses continued to be intact for some religious communities, restricting women’s autonomy in relationships and households. 

 

Even if many Chinese women were liberated by the law, the financial and labour burdens on women often increased. Beyond fulfilling societal duties like agricultural or factory productions, women were still expected to complete household duties, amplifying their workload and limiting personal freedom. For example, during periods of underconsumption for textiles and fabrics, women were forced to spin, weave, and sew in replacement of costly factory cloth (Eyferth). Similarly, women’s reproductive labour such as raising children or maintaining daily household lives were equally demanding for sustaining a socialist production (Eyferth). This uneven treatment extended to other labour as well. When the late 1950s saw the Great Leap Forward and collectivization of agriculture, workers were offered work points to reimburse the collective labourers; however, in many collectives, a man doing field labour typically earned ten labour points a day, while a woman would earn somewhere between six to eight (Hershatter). In theory, women receiving wages for their labour still represented an increase in financial independence and thus equated to positive social change. In practice, rural women remained at the bottom of the rural society. As educator Jacob Eyferth states, Maoist ideology praised women who were invaluable contributors to the public labour force like men, but ignored the unpaid domestic work that underpinned Chinese society (Eyferth). Despite prolonged efforts, their work was considered unpaid “surplus” labour and did not appear in the official record, offering limited social recognition for arduous contributions. 

 

In rural and minority regions, the entrenched cultural customs and neglect from state cadres hindered the effective enforcement of the law compared to urban areas. Nonetheless, the Marriage Law radically changed women’s lives from inescapable subjugation of Imperial responsibilities to being contributors in the national economy, significantly advancing women’s social autonomy. 

 

Mobilization Versus Liberation

While the law granted women legal autonomy, it is frequently argued to be a cynical attempt for Mao to obtain power, leveraging the feminist rhetoric to secure state authority. In Mao’s introductory notes from his article Women Have Gone to the Labour Front published in 1955, he overtly describes the importance of women for socialism: 

 

“In order to build a great socialist society, it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production. Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole” (Mao).

 

This quote has numerous implications. On one hand, the proclamation appears to affirm women’s rights by promoting wage equality and participation in public forces. On another hand, this rhetoric subordinates gender equality as a tool to serve socialist transformation. For instance, integrating women into education and improving their literacy rates was targeted at learning about Maoist ideologies––the importance of obeying to state rules, economic development, targeting political dissents––given that education was seen as a key stepping stone in social progression (Saywell). This recontextualizes the achievements of provisions: while women were given the legal permissions to integrate into society, these reforms were designed to strengthen the state apparatus rather than benevolent efforts to empower women.

 

The experiences of feminist writer Ding Ling exemplifies how Mao often prioritized his own objectives, punishing those like Ding Ling for her criticisms. Ding was a writer who joined the CCP in 1932, being an early supporter of Mao (Warner). Despite this, Ding later criticized Mao and other CCP leaders for exploiting women to produce excessive labour and live more comfortable domestic lives themselves. While her famous essay “Thoughts on March 8” was written in Yan’an in 1942 prior to the Marriage Law, she pre-emptively confronted the Communist policies and attitudes towards relationship structures. She discusses that while providing women legal choice for choosing relationships was intended to liberate women, the law did not succeed in practice. In many cases, women were condemned for bourgeois attitudes for the desire to marry, yet single women remained targets for social exclusion because they were seen as failing to fulfill their expected roles both in the family and the socialist society (Warner). Ultimately, she considered women to be “incapable of resisting all the temptations of society” or oppression they suffer in Yan’an. Ding herself was accused of bourgeois tendencies in 1957 and imprisoned until the Cultural Revolution, where she was sent to the countryside for rehabilitation (Warner). During this time, she wrote about “elusive socialist” women who only feel liberated and powerful when “she serves the state and its people” (Warner). This perspective demonstrates how feminist ideologies were only acceptable if it aligned with state feminist goals of supporting communist tendencies. As it pertains the perspective of an insider feminist during the early communist years, this source is valuable to understand how the Party used gender policies for alternate purposes like mobilizing masses to serve the state. However, given that the “Thoughts on March 8” essay predates the Marriage Law’s enactment, her perspective critiques the overall CCP attitudes as opposed to that specific legislation, meaning this source must be used primarily for evaluating the Party ideology’s effectiveness in propagating positive social change. Nonetheless, her commentary remained important for critiquing the genuinity of the CCP in catering to the people’s needs from the 1950s and beyond. 

 

Viewing the Marriage Law as a cynical attempt to mobilize women proves a limitation in the law’s effectiveness by subordinating women’s protection and rights to political purposes, thus increasing demands on women to serve China’s productivity. However, the overall impact of the law remains significant for institutionalizing new legal rights. While the immediate implementation of the law might have served communist control, the law created precedents for realizing gender equity through tangibly recordable outcomes, such as women’s rights to choose spouses and rights to work. 

 

Conclusion

This essay examined the research question: ​​To what extent did Mao's Marriage Law during the early years of communist rule in 1949-1955 create positive social change for women compared to Imperial China? Considering balanced perspectives, Mao’s Marriage Law generated positive social change for women to a significant extent; it catalysed the dismantling of restrictions in the Confucian family structure and increasing accessibility of land and workforce opportunities––representing a stark departure from the legacy of patriarchal structures established since China’s Imperial rule. However, the extent of positive impact was spread unevenly across different regions in China. In rural areas, the lack of available CCP cadres and deeply entrenched traditional customs continued women’s financial reliance on familial ties. Moreover, the CCP was often seen to dedicate gender reforms for utilising women’s emancipation for political attention. Regardless, the Marriage Law set a significant precedent for challenging archaic patriarchal structures and expanding women’s social opportunities for future generations in relationships, education, and work, which constitutes positive social change overall. The law's significance also lies in its long-term influence on contemporary gender equity policies, such as the 2016 Anti-Domestic Violence policy, which continues to mediate women’s rights to protection (“Anti-domestic Violence System in China”). Above all, it is important to recognize that this evaluation is constrained by the scope of available sources and retrospective perspective. Most evidence is drawn from the perspectives of urban, educated individuals, which neglects the lived experiences of rural women in the working class. Further studies would consider the perspectives of women in 1950 navigating through these marriage reforms, as well as consider the Marriage Law’s effectiveness in China’s later socialist or post-socialist eras.