The masculine norm of socialist equality: institutionalizing socialist masculinities in Maoist China (collaborated with Fuyun Wei)
Abstract
This article examines how socialist masculinities were institutionalized in Maoist China through official discourse, policy texts, and state-led ideological production. Existing scholarship has often interpreted Mao-era gender politics through the binary of ‘gender equality’ and ‘gender erasure.’ We show that Maoist gender discourse universalized a masculinized model of revolutionary personhood and made it the normative standard of socialist citizenship. Drawing on central directives, policy documents, speeches, and propaganda texts, the article identifies three interrelated dimensions of this process: masculinized femininity under the ideal of gender uniformity; militarized masculinity propagated through the militia system and the militarization of everyday life; and proletarian masculinity organized around class struggle, labour heroism, and moral-political leadership. Together, these dimensions reveal how Maoist gender politics reorganized hierarchy through a universalized masculine standard. Women were incorporated into socialist transformation, but largely through standards already coded as masculine. By foregrounding masculinity as an institutional and ideological problem, the article reframes Maoist gender politics as a project of revolutionary subject formation and state-building. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on how revolutionary regimes recast social identities while claiming to abolish inherited inequalities.
Citation
Wei, F., & Lin, C. (2026). The masculine norm of socialist equality: institutionalizing socialist masculinities in Maoist China. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2026.2738129
