Lutze, Faculty Advisor, Thomas

Vock, Emily

Digital Commons @ Illinois Wesleyan University

Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 2010, 21st Annual JWP ConferenceApr 10th, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PMMarriage Reforms in Communist China: ASuccessful Break with Tradition?Emily VockIllinois Wesleyan UniversityThomas Lutze, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcPart of the History CommonsThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Emily Vock and Thomas Lutze, Faculty Advisor, "Marriage Reforms in Communist China: A Successful Break withTradition?" (April 10, 2010). John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 1.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2010/oralpres9/1· THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE - APRIL 2010 Oral Presentation 09.1 MARRIAGE REFORMS IN COMMUNIST CHINA: A SUCCESSFUL BREAK WITH TRADITION? Emily Vock and Thomas Lutze* History Department, Illinois Wesleyan University After 2500 years of Confucian tradition guiding social and familial relations in early twentieth century China, attempts to alter gender roles and marriage customs by the Communist Party from the 1920s through the 1970s, met with mixed results and difficulty. Women's equality represented a key element of the Communist ideology, and the party often successfully initiated radical, wide-scale laws and campaigns to promote gender equality. However, personal accounts indicate that within individual homes, equality did not always prevail. In this project, I am investigating how gender equality was promoted through marriage reforms both in the public realm of society and the domestic sphere of private households. Comparing the private and domestic element of marriage to the public. and political institution, for the periods of the United Front, the civil war, New Democracy, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao period, this research suggests that the tradition of 2500 years was so entrenched that the party's sweeping reforms and propaganda could not make true equality within the private home possible, even as women's role in public life and equality grew. 

Marriage Reforms in Communist China: A Successful Break with Tradition?

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Marriage Reforms in Communist China: A Successful Break with Tradition?

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