Process paper
In our history class at school this year, we learned about citizenship, which inevitably led to the discussion of rights and responsibilities. This turned out to be the theme for the competition and so we soon began searching for a suitable, unique topic. As we researched rights and responsibilities, we found several possible ideas, from the Holocaust, which was a violation of rights, to what it meant to be a global citizen, which entailed the rights and responsibilities of such. We ended up picking Chairman Mao and feminism because, after researching it, we realized how drastically feminism had changed in China in the last 60 years. This change in rights and responsibilities had affected the more than 1 billion people, and due to the fact that we also lived in China, we became even more interested in this topic.
Once we finalized the topic, we outlined our ideas on a spreadsheet and then started doing research. All the research we did was on the Internet because our school does not have a wide variety of Chinese history books. However, we were delighted to find a translation of the Little Red Book, which comprised of all of Mao’s famous quotations, many of which supported our topic about feminism. We also found many primary sources of people who had experienced the inequality before Mao’s reforms. We interviewed our adult Chinese friends, who spoke English, to get the perspective of the common citizen, and see if they thought that Mao was a feminist and if women’s role in China had improved after the People's Republic of China.
We chose the website category because we felt that was the best way to represent our information. It allowed us to utilize variety of multimedia, such as videos and pictures that we would not be able to use in an essay. Also Weebly was the perfect tool that allowed us to work on the website from any place and collectively put all our work together, while working remotely. We split up the research initially after choosing the design for the website, and then spread out the work of writing, finding multimedia, conducting interviews, and making and annotating the bibliography.
Mao Zedong and feminism in China directly relates to the NHD theme rights and responsibilities because Mao put in place laws that protected women’s rights and with those rights women also inherited the same responsibilities as men. For thousands of years women in China were subordinated by the male dominated society, and were not only forced to bind their feet to fit a cultural ideal of beauty, but also were forced into arranged marriages, where the husband and his family took away their rights. Mao outlawed arranged marriages and foot binding, and gave women the chance to get an education so they could get jobs and support themselves. After Mao's reforms, women in China had the same rights as men, and had the same responsibility to take care of themselves as well as their families. There was finally equality.
Word Count: 500
In our history class at school this year, we learned about citizenship, which inevitably led to the discussion of rights and responsibilities. This turned out to be the theme for the competition and so we soon began searching for a suitable, unique topic. As we researched rights and responsibilities, we found several possible ideas, from the Holocaust, which was a violation of rights, to what it meant to be a global citizen, which entailed the rights and responsibilities of such. We ended up picking Chairman Mao and feminism because, after researching it, we realized how drastically feminism had changed in China in the last 60 years. This change in rights and responsibilities had affected the more than 1 billion people, and due to the fact that we also lived in China, we became even more interested in this topic.
Once we finalized the topic, we outlined our ideas on a spreadsheet and then started doing research. All the research we did was on the Internet because our school does not have a wide variety of Chinese history books. However, we were delighted to find a translation of the Little Red Book, which comprised of all of Mao’s famous quotations, many of which supported our topic about feminism. We also found many primary sources of people who had experienced the inequality before Mao’s reforms. We interviewed our adult Chinese friends, who spoke English, to get the perspective of the common citizen, and see if they thought that Mao was a feminist and if women’s role in China had improved after the People's Republic of China.
We chose the website category because we felt that was the best way to represent our information. It allowed us to utilize variety of multimedia, such as videos and pictures that we would not be able to use in an essay. Also Weebly was the perfect tool that allowed us to work on the website from any place and collectively put all our work together, while working remotely. We split up the research initially after choosing the design for the website, and then spread out the work of writing, finding multimedia, conducting interviews, and making and annotating the bibliography.
Mao Zedong and feminism in China directly relates to the NHD theme rights and responsibilities because Mao put in place laws that protected women’s rights and with those rights women also inherited the same responsibilities as men. For thousands of years women in China were subordinated by the male dominated society, and were not only forced to bind their feet to fit a cultural ideal of beauty, but also were forced into arranged marriages, where the husband and his family took away their rights. Mao outlawed arranged marriages and foot binding, and gave women the chance to get an education so they could get jobs and support themselves. After Mao's reforms, women in China had the same rights as men, and had the same responsibility to take care of themselves as well as their families. There was finally equality.
Word Count: 500