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From the early 1950s on, the female tractor driver
was one of the most frequently seen symbols of Chinese socialist
modernity. Known as the nüjie diyi
(女界第一) model workers, the 'female-kind-first', they were part of the group of
'the first' women to be trained in work involving heavy machinery.
Liang Jun (below left), one of China's first female tractor drivers, was
introduced to Chinese audiences in 1953 in posters, anthologies and
school texts.
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The occupational choice of many of these first women
to become tractors drivers had been influenced very much by the many
photographs of Soviet women taking part in production, and by Soviet
films about mechanized agriculture that circulated in China in those
days. Male Soviet advisors and Soviet models also played an important
role in the actual training programs on Chinese soil.
In the many (auto-) biographical materials devoted
to these 'new women' in the early 1950s, a pattern clearly emerges.
First, the female body needed to be strengthened, in order to be
physically up to this new type of work that bore no semblance to the
labor more tradionally associated with women. Secondly, once the
workings of the equipment were mastered, a symbiotic relationship
emerged between the body and the machinery. By not giving in to
physical discomfort, women liberated themselves from historical,
familial and economic oppression.
Obviously, the location of the 'new woman' in
propaganda posters was in the working class and in close proximity of
equipment. She was no longer a mere country girl (农村姑娘，nongcun guniang) but had become a woman-worker (劳动妇女，laodong funü)
by taking part in training and mastering machinery. She represented the
group of new productive members of society that had been
proletarianized and had broken out of the confines of domestic work.
The fact that the tractor girls more often than not
wore white shirts strengthened the message that they had joined the
proletariat. The white shirt, with its connnotation of education, stood
for the ideal of the advanced red and expert worker. Even when a
tractor girl was situated as laboring in the countryside, the white
shirt suggested external knowledge that helped to improve labor
efficiency.
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Although these 'first women' were largely
undifferentiated in physical appearance from the idealized male body of
the period, the qualifyer 'female' rarely failed to appear in the
slogan, thus reminding the reader that women could and should assume
such proportions and occupations. Equally important, however, was the
message that socialism demanded such reshaped bodies.
These constant visual reminders of women taking part
in work traditionally seen as within the male domain served an obvious
purpose, even later on. When Liang Jun entered the tractor driver
program in 1948 as the only woman in the group, she encountered
resistance from classmates and teachers. The hostile environment only
inspired her to persevere in her unconventional choice of work.
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The images made a number of things clear: a woman
should take part in production, whether in the factory or in
agriculture, and in doing so, should not be excluded from operating
machinery. Moreover, they firmly placed the woman in the proletariat.
And finally, they indicated that leadership positions should be as open
to women as to men. In reality and in practice, however, this largely
remained utopian.
As in industry and agriculture, the operation of
tractors and other mechanized equipment by and large remained within
the domain of the male workers. Women were confined to operating
machines used for planting rice shoots and threshing, and to the
machinery in textile factories. The urgency with which female
participation in mechanization intially was represented gave way to an
idealized reality where women operated non-essential machines.
Sources:
Tina Mai Chen, "Female Icons, Feminist Iconography? Socialist Rhetoric and Women's Agency in 1950s China", Gender & History, vol. 15, No. 2 (August 2003), pp. 268-295
Tina Mai Chen, "Proletarian White and Working Bodies in Mao's China, positions, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 2003), pp. 361-393
Return to Iron Women and Foxy Ladies 
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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