“Let the Mother-in-Law Do Housework for the Sake of My Study”: Chinese Rural Women’s Configuration of Liberation in the 1940s

What does women’s liberation entail? The answer to this question in early twentieth-century China had long been dominated by the voices of urban-based social, cultural, and political leaders. They argued that literacy acquisition was, first and foremost, essential to achieving the equality of women and therefore organized various literacy programs, ambitiously aiming at teaching women how to read and write within four to six months. Chinese sociopolitical leaders, however, showed little interest in the issue of literacy retention and what women’s newly obtained, limited skills of reading and writing enabled them to do in daily life. Less is known what literacy training meant to less-educated women and how it was related to their understanding of liberation. This paper examines women’s daily experiences with literacy training in rural North China during the 1940s. It demonstrates that interpersonal and intergroup relations, including but not limited to the mother and daughter-in-law relationship, played a crucial role in rural women’s negotiation and configuration of empowerment. Married women sometimes used schooling to offload some household chores on their mothers-in-law; on other occasions, women leveraged their slightly better skills in reading and writing to acquire a sense of cultural confidence vis-à-vis their husband and/or fellow villagers. The day-to-day locally situated social context constituted a key arena in which women made meaning of their learning experiences and comprehending liberation.