Embodied Activisms: The Case of the Mu Guiying Brigade

In this article I re-think the complex legacies of the Maoist era and their relationship to the contemporary decline in rural women's leadership. By focusing on some of the gendered dimensions of rural development policy, it becomes evident that many “traditional” beliefs about the leadership abilities of rural women were given new life during the Maoist era. Prior to the Cultural Revolution rural women had two dominant paths of “liberation” or jiefang available to them: one that involved a liberation through the female body and household, the path of dangjia, and one that involved a liberation from the constraints of the female body and household, the path of fanshen. In this article I show how the simultaneous implementation of these two paths of liberation on a unique women-led Mu Guiying Brigade during the Great Leap Forward reproduced the problem of the political unacceptability of rural women.