ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION
Shen married a soldier from the village of Xigou, Pingshun county, when she was 17 years old.
It was a time when many women still had "lotus feet," the former custom of foot binding. Her mother-in-law kept telling her to stay at home. Only men worked on the land.
"Being confined to the house yard was killing me," she recalled.
In the village with mostly barren land, villagers struggled to survive. In 1951, two years after founding of the PRC, the village formed a cooperative to expand farming to make ends meet. Li Shunda, head of the co-op, turned to women for farming.
Shen was appointed deputy head of the cooperative and managed to mobilize women through door-to-door visits and persuasion, only to find they would not get the same pay as men.
"Men got 10 work points a day, but we only got a maximum of five points no matter how much work we did."
The work point was a labor pay system during China's planned economy, in which grain and other materials were allocated to farmers based on the work points they earned on the collective land.
To prove that women and men should be equally treated, Shen organized a manuring contest. Women won as many men paused to smoke. As a result, Shen and other women won equal pay.
Shen gained national fame in 1953 due to media coverage of the village co-op. As a role model for women's liberation, Shen attended the World Congress of Women in Copenhagen the same year. It was the first and only time that Shen wore a qipao, a traditional one-piece dress that is usually high-collared and a tight fit.
"The slim dress held back my steps. It is not suitable for farmers like me," she recalls. "But I was told to wear it as courtesy because we represented China."
Elected as a deputy to NPC, she attended the first session of the First NPC in 1954. It was during the session that the first Constitution was passed, legitimizing "equal pay for equal work" as she had proposed.
Among the 1,226 deputies, 147 were women, accounting for less than 12 percent. The percentage has doubled this year, with 742 women in the lineup of the 13th NPC.
