20th Century Revolutionary Movements and Women’s Emancipation

By request of Vostok, here's an essay I just wrote recently on the topic of women's emancipation movements in the period of 20th century revolutions! I only had 2 weeks to get this paper done, so given that limitation, I'm pretty happy with the results! 

This time period is fascinating to me, and I would have loved to study other cases, such as that of the GDR or the USSR in-depth, but I definitely knew a lot less about Cuba and Vietnam's cases, so the project taught me a lot as well! Maybe when I'm done with student papers and I am writing for actual academic purposes, I'll have the time to do a full study (perhaps with other cases of Actually Existing Socialism today instead of former societies).

This work is my own and was completed in 2024 as a research paper for my SYG2221: Women in Society course at Pasco-Hernando State College.

20^th Century Revolutionary Movements and Women’s Emancipation

Word Count: 3,198

My Marxist outlook pointed out to me with an illuminating clarity that women's liberation could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system.

—Alexandra Kollontai, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman, 1926

In the settler colonies of the Americas and the European colonial powers, the 18^th and 19^th centuries began an “age of revolution,” where the burgeoning classes of the bourgeoise began to reject the notion of absolute monarchy in favor of constitutional forms of government. While these new states found themselves at the forefront of progress compared to the pre-enlightenment form of government, millions were still brutalized, beaten, and dehumanized through the processes of colonialism and imperialism by these new progressive states. By the 20^th century, the “age of revolution” was mostly through in the imperial core, but the advent of the Bolshevik revolution provided inspiration to those millions of exploited people, toiling masses, and subjugated groups across the world who were victims of the imperialist liberal states to usher in an arguably more drastic “age of decolonization” later in the century. Unheard of in most of the world before 1917, many of these new—often Marxist—revolutionary movements had explicit goals of directly uplifting women in both rhetoric and action, many campaigning for women’s economic independence as a means of emancipation, equality of opportunity through legislature, and a public image / propaganda campaign that put featured women in powerful and important positions as part of the process of breaking away from their long-standing imperialist chains. To exemplify these cases, the women’s movements in Vietnam and Cuba will be explored in-depth.

Emancipatory War and the Vietnam Women’s Union

If we don’t liberate women, we won’t liberate half the human race.

—Ho Chi Minh

            From the moment French colonial rule was established in Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—women had been the forbearers of the brutality of colonization; colonial rule had exacerbated the inequalities between men and women through the process of land appropriation and coercive labor practices that disproportionately exploited or excluded women in the process (Turley, 1972). In Vietnam, the anti-colonial struggle of the communist party has been intrinsically linked with the struggle for women’s liberation from their respective inceptions. In 1930, Ho Chi Minh’s new Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was formed, and the Vietnam Women’s Union (VWU), whose purpose was to mobilize the female population through clubs, campaigns, and solidarity movements in the realms of “production, defense against the imperialist forces, and the family,” was established in the same step. (Waibel & Glück, 2013). The following year, the ICP declared women as the “most persecuted element in society,” but stressed “self-liberation” rather than direct party actions towards women’s emancipation in the earlier years of the party’s program (Turley, 1972). When the Viet Minh declared independence for Vietnam after the fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945, the First Indochina War broke out between independent Vietnam and the French Imperialists, who were trying to regain control of the region. Through the course of the war, “the VWU’s membership grew to several million, and more than one million women actively participated in the military resistance,” which lasted until 1954, where Vietnam was forced into a settlement that would split the country in two (Waibel & Glück, 2013).

            After becoming the official government of Vietnam in 1945, Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) began a campaign of nationwide reforms and policies meant to bring about socialism and uplift the status of women. Post-revolution, the VWU was “recognized as the overall representative body for women,” being “involved in all policy and law-drafting processes which relate to women and children” through direct consultation with lawmakers (Waibel & Glück, 2013). In 1946, the “New Life Movement” sought to challenge the patriarchal, western ideals that the French colonialists imposed upon the Vietnamese population, even taking up the slogans of the national bourgeoise for the purposes of bringing about a wholly Vietnamese perception of women, even if not explicitly socialist (Turley, 1972). In 1959, the “Law on Marriage and the Family” changed the legal status of women to enshrine the goals of the New Life Movement, outlawing early and forced marriage, polygamy, and domestic abuse, as well as promising equality of the sexes in opportunity and institutions before the law, which was to be monitored and enforced by CPV cadres (Turley, 1972). The period of land reform before the breakout of war also removed the “small concentrations of wealth that had made possible the existence of a rural gentry and thus removed the economic means (and need) to take second wives and concubines,” making the economic conditions more suitable to enact the law as it was laid out in the new laws on the family (Turley, 1972).

            The special character of the women’s emancipation movement in Vietnam was, above many other factors, the experience of the Second Indochina War[1] and its effects on the perception and status of women. While legal factors gave precedent for the status of women to be improved, the decades of war in Vietnam—during both the colonial resistance and the imperialist aggression—made it necessary for women to take up more roles, which the President of the Vietnam Women’s Federation, Nguyen Thi Thap, described as “an opportunity to implement revolutionary change more rapidly and decisively,” thereby “making gains secured for women during the war irreversible” (Turley, 1972). In both the resistance and the aggression, women served as “nurses, couriers, guides, porters, [and] propagandists,” as well as serving in home militias and territorial guerillas—however admission into the army was only allowed during the outbreak of the Second Indochina War[2] (Turley, 1972). While participating in and leading guerilla forces denoted a significant change in the roles of women in Vietnamese society, the “irreversible change” did not derive out of combat exclusively, but rather the drastic economic transformation that took place during the war had the largest impact on the standing of women in Vietnamese society. When every able man was needed to bring himself to the frontlines or to be involved in the war effort—just as in countless other wars—women needed to take the place of men in the workplace who were sent off to combat, having to take on both the roles of the family and the worker (Turley, 1972). In response to this dual role, “the VWU established maternal health and child-care centers all over the country,” taking an approach unlike other (capitalist) nations during/post-war by providing the means to allow these women to remain in the workforce (Waibel & Glück, 2013); instead of making the inclusion of women in the workforce a temporary war-time measure and then returning to a strictly gendered, nuclear family formation, women were integrated into the workforce permanently due to the economic necessity of the war, which was solidified by the socialist legal program of the new Vietnamese government. As a result, Vietnamese women had a heightened sense of economic independence, making the status of women ever closer to that of the man’s in a once deeply patriarchal society.[3]

            After the war was over—due to tensions with the People’s Republic of China, the weakening and coming dissolution of COMECON,[4] and other economic hardships—Vietnam was forced into the position of reform and opening up in 1986 (In Vietnamese: Đổi Mới). While Vietnam’s experiment in “market socialism” unfolded, the VWU also entered a new era of expanded responsibilities and methods, namely poverty alleviation and programs that encouraged gender equality (Waibel & Glück, 2013). With 51% of women able to enlist being involved in the VWU, “Vietnam currently has the highest membership in women's groups worldwide,” working at the grassroots to combat the remaining aspects of oppression women face in Vietnamese society (Waibel & Glück, 2013). Working primarily in the countryside, the VWU “will try to understand the situation of the woman” on a personal level in order to determine which programs will be of most use to her—ranging from vocational training, financial support, the construction of homes, and a variety of educational programs (Waibel & Glück, 2013). These new initiatives did not come without new problems, however; the Đổi Mới program saw the abolition of the co-operative system, weakening the economic position of women in Vietnam; the decentralization of the CPV made the VWU less connected to direct matters of government; and the national “Happy Family” initiative made headway for the return of certain Confucian and traditional values, culminating in much higher incidences of domestic abuse around the country (Waibel & Glück, 2013). While the task of challenging and eliminating these ills that have arrived post-economic liberalization is monumental and will take the further mobilization of women to address, the VWU has been criticized for the fact that “not a single club could be found focusing on issues like sharing household chores and child care with men,” effectively ignoring a vital part of the underlying struggle for women’s emancipation (Waibel & Glück, 2013). Despite the issues at hand for the women in post-liberalization Vietnam, the VWU has provided women with the means to advocate for change in an organized manner from the grassroots to the legislature, winning the women of Vietnam significant gains in legal rights and public image through its nearly 100-year history of struggle.

Guerrilla War and the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas

Why must she be revolutionary? Because woman, who constitutes an essential part of every people, is, in the first place, exploited as a worker and discriminated against as a woman.

—Fidel Castro, Speech to Women’s Congress, 1963

Despite being granted independence from colonial rule in 1906, the Cuban government was still rife with corruption and economically dependent on the United States, keeping the Cuban people trapped in the cycle of imperialism. When the Cuban democratic system was used to elect populist leaders would combat these ills, US-backed leaders such as Fulgencio Batista led a right-wing coup and installed himself as dictator, once in 1933, and again in 1952. Similar to the case of Vietnam, women pre-revolution had a low workforce participation rate, but the few who did participate “received significantly lower compensation than men for doing equivalent work” (Lamrani, 2016). Alongside the patriarchal and economic oppression that derived from the centuries of colonialism, women were disproportionately victims of illiteracy, making up the majority of the 800,000 illiterate people—22% of the population—pre-revolution (Lamrani, 2016). In 1952, upon the mounting repression and a loss of faith in the Cuban political system under the Batista regime, Fidel Castro had launched the Movimiento 26 de julio (M-26-7) that would eventually lead the Cuban Revolution with an attack on the Moncada barracks, which was planned and carried out with the participation of women. Within the militia, women provided vital support among the guerrilla bands, “bearing messages, spying, carrying contraband weapons […] along with the tasks of nursing and cooking,” but their roles did not end here (Jaquette, 1973). Many women, such as that of Celia Sánchez—second-in-command to Castro, during and after the revolution—and Vilma Espín—operation coordinator and eventual head of the Cuban women’s movement—participated directly in the guerrilla war, particularly during the Sierra campaign (Jaquette, 1973). The vast roles that they played within the M-26-7 brought about a new conception of women through the experience of the Cuban revolution, where, as Jane Jaquette suggests, “the act of taking up a gun and entering a guerrilla band implies a new relationship of equality with men and a consequent change in patterns of role differentiation by sex,” which would be reflected by the events following the triumph of the revolution (1973).

By 1959, after 7 years of military struggle, the Cuban Revolution won out against the imperialist-backed Batista regime, and the new government started implementing a popular program of land reform, women’s emancipation, and other socialist policies. In 1960, The Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC)[5] was formed by Vilma Espín to “defend equal rights for all and to end discrimination,” mobilizing women in an official organization that is directly connected to the state (Lamrani, 2016). With 53% of adult women participating in the FMC by 1970, the federation began to organize childcare and educational/vocational programs for working women and mothers in the countryside and the cities, providing women the means to achieve economic independence from men and encouraging increased workforce participation (Jaquette, 1973). The most significant campaigns headed by the FMC, however, were the literacy brigades and the war against prostitution. Before the revolution, over 100,000 women engaged in acts of prostitution to provide for themselves in conditions of economic squalor, so the new Cuban government set out on a campaign to eliminate “the economic and social conditions responsible for the sexual exploitation of women,” while the FMC focused on the rehabilitation of these women into the workforce[6] (Lamrani, 2016). During the 1961 “Year of Education,” the FMC was a vital part in organizing the literacy brigades, being the driving force in the opening of over 10,000 schools across the country and reducing the illiteracy rate from 22% to 3.8% in just 12 months (Lamrani, 2016). Outside of central government policy initiatives, the FMC’s magazine, Mujeres, works to create “new images of women as workers and revolutionary fighters” (Jaquette, 1973), and the leaders of the FMC “negotiate with governmental actors and state institutions for concessions, acknowledgments, and adaptations that the government is not (initially) inclined to make,” holding the government accountable and shaping the image of women in a socialist society (Johnson, 2011).

Because of their participation within the M-26-7 and the Marxist position on women’s emancipation, Cuba is an exceptional case for the advancement of women’s rights in a country which was much like the other countries around it just 65 years ago. With the adoption of the first post-revolutionary constitution of 1976, women were given legal equality amongst men,[7] allowing women “access to all public service positions and all ranks of the armed forces” (Lamrani, 2016). While the provision of legal equality amongst sexes in liberal constitutions is often only in text, women in Cuba participate in governmental positions at nearly the same rates as men. In 2016, women were at the head of 10 out of the 15 provincial governments of Cuba, comprised 48% of the seats in the national assembly (42% in the central committee), and made up 56% of the leaders in the national labor federation (Lamrani, 2016). The FMC has also put a great deal of work towards mobilizing women into the workforce as part of its struggle for women’s economic independence, which has culminated in “women [occupying] 46 per cent of the leadership positions in the economic sector,” which resided at 2% before the revolution (Lamrani, 2016). International organizations such as the United Nations have frequently applauded Cuba for its policy towards women, especially in the realm of women’s healthcare; The infant mortality and maternal mortality rates in Cuba are among the lowest in the Third World, and “Cuban mothers have the right to take full-time leave for a month and a half before delivery and three months after the birth of the child” with full compensation (Lamrani, 2016). As Candace Johnson points out, the FMC provides a great case for the use of state organizations to advance a given cause without being co-opted by the state; the FMC remains ever militant in its struggle and challenges the party line to ensure further gains for women (2011). However, just as in the case in Vietnam, the struggle for full women’s emancipation is not yet over—even though women in Cuba are generally economically independent from men, “gender roles tend to be traditional in that women are the ones mainly responsible for work in the home” (Johnson, 2011). Because of the centuries of colonization that Cuba endured, a culture of patriarchy typical of the European societies that enslaved and exploited them was bred, and further struggle that challenges these deeply embedded cultural conceptions of women ever common in post-colonial societies is still needed. This, however, should not downplay the legitimate gains made by, and for, the women of Cuba following the triumph of the revolution.

Sexually Emancipated Communist Women, Conclusion

Throughout the course of the 20^th century, women’s emancipation started to take a different form for oppressed people around the world than it did for those within the liberal revolutions of the prior age. Special to the character of exploitation in the world stage is that of the woman’s; she is dually oppressed as a laborer and as a woman, and inside these imperialized states, women face these realities in its purest form. Within the oppressed nationalism of those subjugated by the imperial core was the desire for a society devoid of the economic exploitation that came to dominate their societies for the centuries before them, many turning to Marxism to address these issues. Not only in Cuba and Vietnam, but in the Soviet Union, China, Nicaragua, East Germany, Burkina Faso, and Ghana, Marxism was used as a means to analyze the oppression of workers and to uplift the status of women as equal members of society.

            Among the most important programs laid out by Cuba, Vietnam, and the other former / current Marxist states were the programs that attempted to provide women with total economic independence. By making childcare, vocational/educational programs, housing, work, and other resources readily available to women, they are able to combat the institutions of domestic slavery that the colonial system put in place. It should be said, however, that much work needs to be done within these countries by their respective women’s organizations to truly combat the influence of patriarchal ideas that have seeped into their cultures after centuries of colonial influence, as women in these countries still often deal with the scars of the previous society, most commonly the “double shift.” Without the abolition of the division of labor amongst the sexes in all sectors of life, women will not be truly liberated, but the few countries to have challenged these institutions have historically waged a battle against the origins of the issue—capitalism and feudalism—instead of putting a band-aid over the underlying problem as the liberal states have attempted. While the age of fervent socialist revolution and decolonization seems to have ceased for the time being, the experiences of their women’s emancipation movements should be analyzed further and applied in future programs for the wider struggle of women’s liberation.

References

Jaquette, J. S. (1973). Women in Revolutionary Movements in Latin America. Journal of Marriage and Family, 35(2), 344–354. https://doi.org/10.2307/350664

Johnson, C. (2011). Framing for Change: Social Policy, the State, and the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas. Cuban Studies, 42, 35–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24487499

Salim Lamrani, & Translated by Larry R. Oberg. (2016). Women in Cuba: The Emancipatory Revolution. International Journal of Cuban Studies, 8(1), 109–116. https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.8.1.0109

Turley, W. S. (1972). Women in the Communist Revolution in Vietnam. Asian Survey, 12(9), 793–805. https://doi.org/10.2307/2642829

Waibel, G., & Glück, S. (2013). More than 13 million: mass mobilisation and gender politics in the Vietnam Women’s Union. Gender and Development, 21(2), 343–361. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24697252