Women, the Left, and Anti-Communism in the Cold War

1. Women, the Left, and Anti-
Communism in the Cold War

2. Mire Koikari article
• Notion that empowering women was crucial
to the establishment of democracy in Japan
– Idea that patriarchal and authoritarian cultures
bred fascism/imperialism
– Need “reconstruction” on the level of the family,
civil society (as well as govt.)
• Exporting of “American” gender ideals
becomes linked to assertion of US power
abroad: how should we view this?

3. Beate Sirota Gordon
• Born in Vienna into a Jewish family; grew
up in expat community in Japan
– Fluent in Japanese and many other languages
• Left for US in 1939; attended Mills college
• 1st American woman to go to postwar
Japan
– At 22, began working for Gen. McArthur
– Given responsibility for writing the articles on
women in the new constitution

4. Beate Sirota Gordon

5. Articles in Japanese constitution
• Article 14: ”All of the people are equal under the law and
there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or
social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status
or family origin.”
• Article 24: “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual
consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through
mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and
wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property
rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other
matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall
be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and
the essential equality of the sexes.”

6. Miss Chinatown USA
• Began in the 1950s as an
attempt to distance Chinese-
Americans from Red China
• Emphasis on assimilation
– Chinese women no longer
sequestered
• 1960s critique: women
objectified as “china dolls”
– Reinforced of Western
standards of beauty

7. Historians’ views of women/gender
in the Cold War
• Old interpretation 1930s-1960s “doldrum” years
– Organized feminism in remission
– Emphasis on discontinuity between periods of activism
in the 1920s and 1970s
• Liberal feminism re-emerges with publication of Betty
Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
• Newer views
– Focus on attention to women’s issues by labor unions
and the Communist Party
– Greater emphasis on continuity; broader definition of
“feminism”
• New attention to the fact that Betty Friedan had been a
journalist in the late 1940s and early 50s for the labor press

8. Congress of American Women
• Popular front organization founded in 1946
– US Branch of the Soviet-sponsored Women’s
International Democratic Federation
• Founded in Paris as part of anti-fascist, pro-Soviet Left
– Slogan: “Ten women anywhere can organize
anything.”
– After just a year had 250,000 members
• Argued for continuing wartime price controls,
child care centers
• Pro-labor; pro-peace, anti-racism
• Opposed the Truman Doctrine

9. Congress of American Women
• Oct. 1949 HUAC report declared the group “anti-
American” and “pro-Soviet”
• 1950: Ordered by the US Justice Department to
register as a foreign agent
• Disbanded in 1950
• Diverse constituency; included African Americans
• Members included Eleanor Flexner and Gerda
Lerner, one of the first women historians

10. From the HUAC Report
”The purpose of these organizations is not to deal primarily with
women’s problems, as such, but rather to serve as a specialized arm fo
Soviet political warfare in the current ‘peace’ campaign to disarm and
demobilize the United States and democratic nations generally, in order
to render them helpless in the face of the Communist drive for world
conquest. While professedly American in name, the Congress of
American Women has been anti-American and pro-Soviet since its
inception. In fact, the Congress of American Women, as well as its parent
body, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, has
consistently denounced and opposed all recognized non-Communist
women’s organizations both here and abroad.”

13. Historical Context
• Growing hostility toward Mexican-Americans;
anxiety about illegal border-crossings
– Culminated in “Operation Wetback” (1954)
• Taft-Hartley Act (1947)
– Greatly restricted union activities
– Gave the US Attorney General power to obtain an 80-
day injunction if a strike “imperiled the national health
or safety”
• Anti-communism/McCarthyism
– Hollywood blacklist

14. Empire Zinc strike
• 1950-51 Strike against Empire Zinc Mine in Grant
County, NM
– Mexican-American Local 890 of the International
Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (the “Mine-
Mill”)
• Expelled from the CIO in 1950 because of charges of
Communist influence
– Workers’ complaints focused on two-tiered system
• Mexican-American faced worse working conditions; lower pay
than their Anglo counterparts; substandard housing
• June 1951: Injunction forbidding the striking
miners from returning to picket line

15. Women and the strike
• Women took over the strike for 6 months
– Added own demands: indoor plumbing; better living
conditions
• In the meantime, men had to deal with the
kids/home
– Came to better understanding of women’s work
• January 1952: company negotiators agreed to
most of the workers’ demands
• Film is explicitly feminist

16. Hollywood Blacklist
• 1947: HUAC hearings
– House Un-American Activities Committee
• Salt of the Earth team had all been blacklisted
– Hebert Biberman, director
• One of the Hollywood Ten
• Refused to name names; spent time in jail
– Michael Wilson
• Screenwriter
– Paul Jarrico
• Screenwriter/producer

17. Persecution during/after filming
• Filming began in 1953
• Congressmen denounced as “weapon from
Russia”
• FBI investigated funding
• Police hounded cast and crew
• Union Hall mysteriously burned
• Rosaura Revueltas (plays Esperanza) deported
before filming ended
• Thoroughly suppressed on release in the US
– But screened in Europe, Soviet Union, China