Research On Women’s Liberation Movement In The May 4Th Period From The Perspective Of Gender

Marx once said: “everyone who knows a little history knows that there can be no great social change without the enzyme of women.” The Chinese women’s liberation movement began in modern times.The early reformists put women’s liberation in the national political purpose of saving the nation from extinction,which opened the prelude of the women’s liberation movement in the modern sense.During the revolution of 1911,the bourgeois revolutionaries propagated women’s rights as a part of civil rights and actively encouraged women to participate in the revolutionary movement,pushing forward the women’s liberation movement.The propaganda and practice of feminist thought of the advanced intellectuals during the May 4th movement was a purposeful choice,whose goal was to realize the full liberation of women as “people”.The women’s liberation movement in this period covered many fields,such as economic independence,educational equality,political participation,social openness,and freedom of marriage and love.With its unprecedented scale,breadth and depth,it reached the peak of the women’s movement before the birth of the Communist Party of China.The essence of the women’s liberation movement in the May 4th movement is the evaluation,challenge and reconstruction of women’s traditional social gender role,and gender is the essential reflection of social relations.Therefore,the realistic cause,evolution process and value embodiment of the women’s liberation movement in the May 4th movement should be based on the social background at that time to explore.The gender theory was introduced into the Chinese academic circle in the 1990 s.From the perspective of historical methodology,gender explicitly criticized the mainstream male voices in history and questioned the historical memory and narration.It is also pointed out that the superposition of multiple factors such as economy,politics,culture and society is the primary reason for the irrational gender difference and the initiation of women’s liberation movement.This theory jumped out of the collective unconsciousness that “physiological differences lead to social differences” and reconstructed the issue of women’s liberation.Based on the gender theory and the research view of regarding the gender to be the same as class and nation,this paper would like to re-examine the women’s liberation of China’s modernization process,further to explore the social and historical background of the May 4th period,the women’s liberation,the construction of the “new women” image,characteristics and influence of women’s liberation movement,and then to give suggestions on the construction of a harmonious society for both genders.This paper is divided into four parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly expounds the background of the topic,the definition of the concept,the significance of the research,the research status,the innovation and deficiencies of the article.The second part introduces the social and historical background of the rise of women’s liberation movement in the May 4th movement from the international and domestic dimensions.The international background is mainly reflected in the rise of the feminist movement in capitalist countries and the spread of marxist concept of women.The domestic background mainly reflects the collapse of the feudal natural economy,the ideological enlightenment of the advanced intellectuals and the awakening of the self-liberation consciousness of the majority of female intellectuals.The third part comprehensively analyzes the construction of the image of “new women” in the May 4th period from the aspects of striving for women’s economic independence,gender equality in education,participation in political activities,public socialization between men and women,freedom of love and marriage,etc.,and presents the multi-dimensional picture of women’s liberation in the May 4th period.The fourth part summarizes the characteristics,influence and limitation of the women’s liberation movement in the May 4th period.