Iron Girls: Mao’s Brutal Gender Experiment

Mao Zedong claimed he was liberating China’s women. Instead, he built one of the most brutal gender experiments in modern history. Under slogans like “Women hold up half the sky,” millions of women were forced into deadly labor brigades, violent political campaigns, and punishing ideological tests. They became the “Iron Girls” — symbols of Mao’s propaganda and victims of his ambitions.

In this episode of Dictators Files: The Dark Side of Power, we uncover the truth behind Mao’s so-called gender revolution. Drawing on research from historians such as Wang Zheng, Xueping Zhong, Frank Dikötter, Roderick MacFarquhar, Gail Hershatter, and Tani Barlow, we expose the system that pushed women into furnaces, fields, and street violence — then abandoned them when their bodies broke. Through survivor accounts, historical evidence, and personal tragedies hidden from official history, we reveal how Mao turned women into tools of production, tools of terror, and finally… tools to be discarded.

This documentary uncovers the real legacy of the Iron Girls: not liberation, but exploitation. Not empowerment, but exhaustion. Not equality, but sacrifice in service of a dictator who demanded strength, rewarded obedience, and erased the women who could no longer endure it.

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