The Life of a Slogan: Maoism, Gender, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

A discussion by professor Emily Honig on the impact of the Cultural Revolution on state feminism in China.

The Oldenborg Luncheon Colloquium, the Pacific Basin Institute, and the Department of History at Pomona College present:

The Life of a Slogan: Maoism, Gender, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

The presentation will focus on the famous Mao quotation and popular slogan: “The times have changed; men and women are the same (as on the photo). Anything male comrades can do, female comrades can do too.” Throughout scholarly analyses, memoirs, and personal recollections, this slogan has been treated as epitomizing the Cultural Revolution message to women and the version of state feminism propagated during the 1960s and 1970s.

The talk will analyze the slogan as an historical subject with a life of its own that might be reconstructed as well examine when it was first articulated, the traditions upon which it drew, and the messages it has engaged and contested.

Emily Honig is the author of Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford University Press, 1986); Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850-1980 (Yale University Press, 1992); and the co-author of Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980’s (Stanford University Press,1988). Honig is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.