| After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the leader group embarked on a new journey to eliminate the feudal land ownership system in an effort to consolidate the new regime and promote economic growth. Starting from June 1950, a series of vigorous land reform movements were carried out. In the land reform movement, women has played an important role. It is during this massive movement that women’s rights began to take to attention of the Party. This article mainly introduces women’s living conditions in rural areas before the land reform and the of women involvement in land reform. By delving into the historical data, the researcher attempts to present the history of how women were motivated to take an active part in the land reform and achieved their liberation. Besides, this article also analyses the problems during the land reform and the implications to today’s ongoing reform and development.First of all, this paper introduces women’s living conditions in rural areas of Hubei province before the founding of the New China. In brief, women were deprived of economic inheritance, the right to education and marital autonomy. They were abused both before and after marriage. The significance of women emancipation was demonstrated by a comparison between women’s misery in feudal period and the changes in the later period of land reform.The second and the third part of the article mainly discuss how the nation encouraged women during the land reform movement, and how women went out of the family to share the land. After land reform, an obvious change in women’s values took place, they began to actively fight for their political rights, economic interests and education rights. During the land reform, rural women furthered their pursue through the movement of propagating the new marriage law. Later they also mobilized their relatives to participate in the Korean War, strived for the family status. These all reflect that after the land reform, rural women’s self-consciousness has enhanced, they became more aware of their rights and defended for themselves.Finally, this paper sums up the changes of rural women’s life in such aspects as politics, economy, culture after the land reform in Hubei province; discussed the characteristics and limitations of the women’s liberation work in rural areas. Insights are given concerning what should be do to further rural women’s liberation with an emphasis on two perspectives, namely the national policy and women themselves. The researcher compared her opinion with those of Li Xiaojiang and He Ping and other people. On the one hand, the government should set the right policy to promote rural women’s liberation, on the other hand women themselves should respond to such policies by developing themselves and making more efforts to gain the initiative in the liberation.Through an elaborated text, the epilogue part tries to make an objective evaluation of women’s liberation during the land reform period in the rural areas in Hubei province. Hopefully this paper it can contribute to the study of women’s liberation movement in China. |
