Iron Girls

Iron Girls (sometimes translated as Iron Women) is a term that was popularized in China during the 1950s through the 1970s. It was used to define a new idealized emerging group of working women who were strong and capable of performing highly demanding labor tasks, usually assigned to men. These tasks included repairing high-voltage electric wires, working at farmland, or heavy physical work.^[1] Beginning during the Great Leap Forward, Iron Girls were a symbol of shifting gender norms during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and in the years following the cultural revolution they faced harsh criticism.^[2] Iron Girls relied on the idea that men and women were inherently equal, but this idea was criticized by some feminists for its emphasis on the division of labor.^[2]

Accounts of Iron Girls are limited, aside from state propaganda which was circulated during the Cultural Revolution. Propaganda images emphasized women with strong physical attributes as well as their ability to perform in jobs which had been dominated by men in the years prior to the Cultural Revolution. Firsthand narratives in the form of memoirs which focus on other social issues at the time are some of the only pieces of evidence of the era available to historians, making it difficult to understand the reality of life as an Iron Girl.^[2]

The relative equal opportunities for women in labor was a deviation from traditional Chinese models, where there was a large gendered division of labor. After the death of Mao Zedong, the idea and depictions of Iron Girls would be heavily mocked and the Chinese government would encourage women to take up traditionally female roles.^[2]