“Women hold up half the sky.”
This iconic quote attributed to Mao Zedong has been central to Beijing’s messaging about gender equality for decades.
It was not just a slogan. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Communist Party passed a Marriage Law that banned arranged marriages, abolished foot-binding and encouraged women to enter education and the workplace.
But the party’s stance on where women belong has shifted over the decades, according to a new study.
To gauge the Communist Party’s stance on women’s role in society, researchers analysed 125,532 articles published between 1990 and 2023 in People’s Daily – the party’s mouthpiece – arguing these “directly reflect” the views of the party and central government.
They found that the paper had increasingly distanced women from their role in the public sphere in recent years while maintaining a strong focus on their role in the household.