People's Republic of China After the founding of the PRC in 1949, newly-established local governments continued to prioritize women's political mobilization. The cultural stigma against young women working outside the home disintegrated. Chinese grandmothers increased their roles as caregivers for their grandchildren, facilitating younger women's opportunities for paid work. In a weakening of traditional Chinese patrilineality, grandmothers on the mother's side gained equal status to grandmothers on the father's side allowing them to fill gaps in childcare. Soon after its founding, the PRC passed the Marriage Law of 1950. It prohibited concubinage and marriages when one party was sexually powerless, suffered from a venereal disease, leprosy, or a mental disorder. The law abolished arranged marriages, paying money or goods for a wife, and outlawed polygamy and child marriage. John Engel, a professor of Family Resources at the University of Hawaii, argues that the PRC established the Marriage Law of 1950 to redistribute wealth and achieve a classless society. The law "was intended to cause ... fundamental changes ... aimed at family revolution by destroying all former patterns ... and building up new relationships on the basis of the new law and new ethics." Xiaorong Li, a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, asserts that the Marriage Law of 1950 not only banned the most extreme forms of female subordination and oppression, but gave women the right to make their own marital decisions. Several decades after the implementation of the 1950 Marriage Law, China still faced serious issues, particularly in population control. The Great Leap Forward's focus on total workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor advancement. As women became increasingly needed to work in agriculture and industry, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of Iron Women arose. Women did traditionally male work in both fields and factories, including major movements of women into management positions. Women competed for high productivity, and those who distinguished themselves came to be called Iron Women. During the Cultural Revolution, one way China promoted its policy of state feminism was through revolutionary opera. Most of the eight model dramas in this period featured women as their main characters. The narratives of these women protagonists begin with them oppressed by misogyny, class position, and imperialism before liberating themselves through the discovery of their own internal strength and the Communist Party. A second marriage law