Over the course of thousands of years, Chinese civilization, which has included numerous different cultural strands, has alternated between matriarchic and patriarchic values, and produced competing philosophical traditions. There have in fact been times when women ruled China, whether as empress, empress consort or empress dowager. Some of these, including the era of Empress Wu Zetian (665-705), saw upticks in gender equality, while others, like that of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908), came hand-in-hand with a very retrograde male-privileged conservatism and was one of the nadirs of Chinese civilization, as existential crises mounted.
In Mao Zedong’s formative years, he was moved deeply by examples of Chinese women martyring themselves for liberation. He was no doubt familiar with cases like Qiu Jin, a member of the anti-Qing Guangfuhui, publishing a feminist newspaper,…