职业妇女(Working Women)

970s, the muscular and energetic female team members, “imitation boys” (jia xiaozi) or “iron women” (tie nüren) working under commune leader chen yonggui, played an enormously influential function as role models for women. iron girls inspired women to take on the most difficult and demanding tasks.generally speaking, then, women were confined to agriculture. women in the forefront of industrial production only became a poster theme from the great leap forward onwards. the trend was continued in cultural revolution posters, when women increasingly were represented while at work in factories. this was not necessarily limited to the textile industries, which were traditionally seen as typical places where women ought to work.

　　although not explicitly visible in propaganda posters, female members of the urban work force were employed along unstated gender lines. men usually were given technical jobs, and women were assigned non-technical, auxiliary and service jobs, regardless of their educational level.while women who in preceding decades often were depicted while engaging in typically masculine pursuits, strong pressure was exerted on them in the 1980s to return to their traditional, more `feminine` roles of servants/waitresses, mothers and child-rearers. paralleling the changes in thinking among the leadership, the need was no longer felt in official art to urge women to break through the traditional assumptions of gender inferiority.

　　instead of going out to work, they were exhorted more and more often to return to the stove and engage in home making. such exhortations were voiced with renewed vigor in the late 1990s, when female workers who had been made redundant by the ever larger number of bankrupt state-owned industries were called upon to take on the responsibility for the domestic side of family life. a number of women on maternity leave even saw their legally granted period of absence extended indefinitely. on the other hand, the large numbers of women migrating from rural areas looking for employment in industry, the so-called `working girls` (dagongmei), constitute a relatively cheap female labor force that is exploited relentlessly in the name of economic development.