4 - Sewing Like a Girl

Summary

Although zhifu is a term more closely associated with men’s wear than with women’s, women’s work in the Mao years did include making zhifu. Chapter Four documents the proliferation of sewing schools for women in the 1950s, showing that they were a route by which women entered the paid workforce. Women in various contexts – in factories, sewing co-ops, and especially in their homes – were significant agents in the production of the new national wardrobe. In much of rural China, women continued to spin the yarn, weave the cloth, and make the clothes and shoes for all the family members. In this way, they reproduced a material culture not too different from that of preceding generations (although not entirely the same, either). In the towns, however, a new material culture was created, much of it at the hands of women.