Mao Zedong’s ‘Liberation’ of Chinese Women

Lauded as progressive, the marriage policies of communist China brought tragedy and tyranny to the traditional family

A woman before being executed by a communist soldier in China in this file photo.

The last acceptable words of praise for communist China’s founding dictator Mao Zedong, it seems, are of the sociological persuasion.

“Women hold up half the sky,” the chairman famously said. To modern observers, these words—and the social policies that accompanied them—serve to convince that at least there was room for progressive thought under history’s bloodiest tyrant.