Rising From Hardship: Nvquanzhuyi And The Fourth-class Women

By Author: Water Henry
Total Articles: 73
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Through a series of essays about women's careers, gender relations, and women's movements, Yang joins the debate and offers a conception of niiquanzhuyi that not only challenges the prescribed gender roles, but also links the Chinese women's movement with the lives of working-class women. As a social activist and writer, Yang organized and participated in the women's movement and the labor movement, and published extensively on women's issues in progressive newspapers and periodicals in the 1920s. Through her direct involvement in the women's movement and her feminist essays, Yang modeled and promoted her belief that women students and working-class women must unite and "rise from hardship" to Diesel Jeans defend the women's cause ("Chinese Women's Situation" 542). Although Yang wrote to middle-class women, she paid special attention to the issues of working-class women's lives and struggles.

In her 1922 essay "Women's Careers," Yang takes on those who degraded women and made women a scapegoat for all the social ills that endangered the nation, revealing the ...
... oppressive system that deprived women of their independent character: Traditionally, women's position in society is lower than that of men and their life is more boring than men's. [. . .] The root cause of women's dependence on men is the fact that women, confined and conditioned by the social-historical forces, have accepted the fallacy that, because of differences in ability, it is men and not women who are entitled to freedom, knowledge, power, and careers. By pointing to the root of women's oppression, Yang intends to raise women's consciousness and urges them to reclaim self-confidence and independence. She points out that women's lack of confidence in their own strength was caused by the fact that men had always monopolized the most powerful positions in all institutions and relegated women to Lee Jeans
subordinate positions. To overcome the difficulty, Yang contends, women must respect themselves and rely on themselves. Yang's analysis of women's conditions reveals the conventional assumptions behind the submissive ideals. She also encourages women from better economic backgrounds to intensify their efforts, and to help fellow working-class women who have been denied education.

Yang directly addresses the issues of gender, culture, and class in her analysis of the Chinese women's movement. In her 1926 essay "Chinese Women's Situation and the National Revolution," published in Zhongguo Funii [Chinese Women], she examines closely the major social forces that oppressed women in the early twentieth century, connecting women's emancipation to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist movements. Yang first analyzes the Chinese patriarchal system, calling the old mores and customs into question: The Confucian sages try every possible means to degrade and belittle women. In the Analects, Confucius says "it is only women and petty persons who are difficult to be provided for". Throughout two thousand years, many rules were designed to suppress and restrict women, to deprive women of educational opportunities, and to turn women into submissive niuma [cows and horses] and isanwu [playthings].