1930-40년대 중국의 전시보육(戰時保育)과 성별분업 모델 재고(再考)

Abstract

With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, child relief became an urgent social requirement. After 1938, women’s groups established the Wartime Care Association responsible for wartime childcare. With the cooperation of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, they carried out various activities for the rescue, upbringing, and education of children. In calling for women to participate in wartime childcare, some argued that through social activities such as childcare, women can be liberated from their families. At that time, most people took for granted that women were responsible of childcare. However, women leaders of the CCP predicted that public childcare would help women’s liberation. In the border areas under the rule of the CCP, daycare centers were operated, and due to insufficient resources, manpower, and facilities, only some cadres or children of anti-Japanese warriors were entrusted to them. Moreover, due to threats such as material shortages, airstrikes, or besieges in the border areas, childcare work was not limited to taking care of children, but also included complex, dangerous, and difficult tasks such as protection of children, counter-espionage, disguise, and various productive labor, as well as communication with the party organizations. The CCP also had female combatants which meant that women’s role was not just fixed in the rear. However the number of female soldiers and cadres were still very small. When the contents of the childcare work most of which was done by the women’s organizations, it may seem that traditional female roles of childcare was simply reassigned to women. However, while the childcare women workers were entering and leaving from combat areas for their work, the roles played by these women were closely related to combat, and they actually belonged to military administrative organizations. These cases urge us to redefine the gender role of labor in the CCP.