Socialist Ideology and Women’s Higher Education

Focusing on the Activities of the All-China Women’s Federation under the Reform and Open-door Policies

Abstract

　 The purpose of this paper is to clarify the reason why it was necessary to establish women’s colleges in China, a country that proudly proclaims its commitment to socialism. By focusing on the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) and the process by which it established the Administrators’ College of the All-China Women’s Federation, an adult education college (now a regular higher education institution known as China Women’s University) various aspects of the relationship between the national ideology and the establishment of higher education institutions will be clarified and examined. When the open-door reform policy started, the Chinese Communist Party announced a policy of imposing educational requirements on the membership of cadres and of regularizing cadre training. The imposition of educational requirements put women at a disadvantage to men in cadre selection due to their lower educational level in comparison with men. However, the ACWF used the policy of regularizing cadre training as an aid for establishing higher educational institutions for women in order to retrain cadres, cultivate women cadres with expertise in the fields in which ACWF was active and increase job opportunities for women. Just as in capitalist countries, women’s colleges were established in China in an effort to remedy women’s restricted access to higher education. The case of China shows that even in a country dominated by a strong ideology such as Marxism, which emphasizes gender equality, it is not possible to rectify the gap in work opportunities for men and for women without rectifying the educational gap.