Fight for equal pay still inspires women

GUIYANG — In late March, a plantation in Baozi village, Guizhou province, bustled with tourists enjoying cups of tea around stoves or picking fruit for fun.

Some 39,000 square meters in size and created with an investment of 10 million yuan ($1.45 million), the plantation grows a variety of fruit, including citrus, passion fruit and dragon fruit, and can receive up to 500 tourists a day. "We call the plantation the 'Ladies Manor', because our 50-plus employees are predominantly women," said Huang Dan, head of the plantation.

The 35-year-old comes from Liuchang township, not far from Baozi. Since starting her business in 2019, Huang has helped turn the plantation into a booming, multimillion-yuan business.

Many Baozi women like Huang said they are inspired by a historic episode that turned the village into a household name.

In the 1950s, China began to encourage women, who had previously been confined to domestic work, to take an active part in the production as part of the effort to develop agriculture, although they were paid considerably less than men at the time.

Wen Anrong, who is now 87, said that women had to work two or three days to earn the same number of labor credits a man earned in a day. Unsurprisingly, many women felt the system was unfair.

As a result, a heated debate began, with many women in the village demanding the same pay as men. They eventually won the argument and their struggle helped boost productivity, resulting in an increase in grain production.

Qiu Deying, who is now 81, once earned 5,551 labor credits and was nominated as the champion worker that year, beating out all her male co-workers in the process.

"People said that women couldn't work as hard as men, but I didn't believe that," she said.

"Women hold up half the sky. We are just as competent as men."

After an agricultural magazine ran an article on Baozi's breakthrough in 1955, Chairman Mao Zedong called on other villages and cooperatives to follow suit. People from all over the country began visiting Baozi to learn from its experience. The village's women also became active in public affairs, and for a long time now, women have held most posts on village leadership committees.

One of them, a 58-year-old village official, Chen Hongfang, is Wen's daughter-in-law.

"Every time my mother-in-law tells me the story of fighting for equal pay, I am moved," she said. "She has always encouraged me to work just as well as men."

Tan Li, Baozi Party chief, attributes the development of Baozi in large part to the work ethic of its women. "Gender equality unleashed the productivity and creativity of women," Tan said.

He said that when the village piloted garbage sorting, Chen patrolled each day to ensure no one was making a mistake.

"Once, she even passed out from the smell as she dug through the trash to show the villagers how to separate dry garbage from wet," Tan said. "They were all impressed by her work ethic."

Experts speak highly of how this historic fight for gender equality inspired generations of women in the village. "The women's deeds reflected their awareness of the need to protect their labor rights," said Wang Dan, an official with the Guizhou provincial women's federation, adding that their example has taken root and flourished across the country.

Jiao Jie, executive deputy director of the women's research center at Shaanxi Normal University, said, "I hope society will offer more support and opportunities for women to shine on a larger stage."