Feminist Contentions in Socialist State Formation
Focusing on the Shanghai Women’s Federation’s organizing and mobilizing efforts at the grassroots since the CCP took over Shanghai in 1949, this chapter traces the ACWF’s institutional development and feminist contentions in the early stage of socialist state formation. It illuminates contentious gendered power struggles in the process of demarcating differences between the “government” and the “mass organization” that structured an appearance of a socialist state as well as regulated a subordinated status of the WF system in the power structure of the new socialist state. Feminist critical voices found in the archives demonstrate a relaxed political atmosphere in the initial stage of the CCP’s rule, while the battles over the grassroots organization Women’s Congress reveal male hostility towards feminist endeavors in the CCP upon the founding of the PRC. A politics of concealment was identified in this early stage.