October 2, 1995 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408/459-2495)

LUCE FOUNDATION GRANTS $150,000 TO SUPPORT COLLABORATION BETWEEN UC SANTA CRUZ AND CHINESE SCHOLARS

Grant will be used to study the recent history of women and work in China

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--A $150,000 three-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation will support a collaboration between U.S. and Chinese scholars to study women in the labor force in China from 1949 to the present. The grant was awarded to three faculty members at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The three have just returned from the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where they met with their Chinese colleagues to plan the project.

Titled "A Cultural History of Women and Work in Twentieth- Century China," the project was conceived by Emily Honig, professor of women's studies; Gail Hershatter, professor of history; and Lisa Rofel, assistant professor of anthropology. The Luce grant will make it possible for the three to travel to China to study local archives, gather oral histories, and consult with their Chinese counterparts. The grant will also support residencies at UCSC for the seven Chinese scholars involved in the collaboration.

While all three UCSC faculty will explore the theme of women and work in postrevolution China, each will focus on a different era. Hershatter will study the 1950s, regarded as the golden age of socialism in China. Honig will examine the Cultural Revolution--the time from 1966 to 1976 when Chairman Mao Tse-tung launched an all-out campaign to attack those within the Communist Party whom he felt had abandoned the principles of the revolution. Rofel will concentrate on contemporary China, examining how people's cultural values have been influenced by the introduction of a market economy.

Rofel stresses that, "The emphasis of the project is to do collaborative work with scholars in China. There's been a wonderful burgeoning of women's studies in China in the past decade. We first went to China two years ago to meet these women and see what they're doing. Now that the grant is in place, we can map out the specifics."

For Hershatter, travel to China will give her an opportunity to collect oral histories from people who experienced the 1949 communist takeover and the ensuing "golden age" of communism in China. "I want to know how that first decade is remembered by those who lived through it and how it is taught to young Chinese now," she explains.

"The new leadership created dramatic changes in the status and quality of life for Chinese women," Hershatter adds. "Previously, women in the paid labor force were looked down on and often suspected of prostitution. In the new society it was a glorious thing to be a worker, so the status of working women changed--they were considered heroines."

Honig wants to learn how Mao's ideology affected the types of jobs women held. "During the Cultural Revolution one of Mao's popular slogans stated that women could do anything men could do. One way he promoted that idea was with posters that showed women doing unconventional jobs like repairing high-voltage wiring," she says. "I want to see if that ideology influenced people's attitudes and beliefs about the work women could do." Honig plans to research the archives of local counties and to conduct oral history interviews.

Rofel, a cultural anthropologist, is looking at the lives of working women in modern China. "In the mid-1980s the market economy began to take hold, and trade and distribution flourished. Since then, large multinational factories have been drawing women to the coastal areas for work. They come from small inland villages to these industrial coastal cities. I'm curious about how their values and relationships with their villages change when they move." Rofel's research will involve intensive observation and interviews with factory workers.

The first residency at UCSC by Chinese scholars is planned for the spring of 1996. Three visiting faculty will present talks and participate in workshops and seminars.

The grant was announced August 14 by the Henry Luce Foundation, which awarded a total of $11.9 million this year. The foundation was established in 1936 by the late Henry R. Luce, co- founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc. With assets of $500 million, the foundation supports programs in higher education, Asian studies, American art, theology, public affairs, and women in science and engineering.

This is the third grant the UCSC project has received; the first, totaling $10,000, was awarded in 1994-95 by the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program, which awarded an additional grant of $35,990 to the project in May for 1995-96.

Gail Hershatter: 408/459-4041; e-mail, gail_hershatter@macmail.ucsc.edu

Emily Honig: 408/459-3710 (O) or 408/429-6638 (H); e-mail, ehonig@cats.ucsc.edu

Lisa Rofel: (408) 459-3615; e-mail, lrofel@cats.ucsc.edu

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