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State of the Field: Women in China's Long Twentieth Century
Abstract
This indispensable guide for students of both Chinese and women's history synthesizes recent research on women in twentieth-century China. Written by a leading historian of China, it surveys more than 650 scholarly works, discussing Chinese women in the context of marriage, family, sexuality, labor, and national modernity. In the process, Hershatter offers keen analytic insights and judgments about the works themselves and the evolution of related academic fields. The result is both a practical bibliographic tool and a thoughtful reflection on how we approach the past.
... The CPC Criticizers additionally condemn the harshness of implementing the policy. Methods of CPC enforcement may include: fatal beatings, forced sterilizations of men and women, mandatory pregnancy testing, forced late-term abortions, forced IUD insertion, job loss, the detention of pregnant women, excessive fines that can exceed 10 times a family's yearly income, and the destruction of familial residences (Hershatter, 2004). The CPC Supporters, on the other hand, explain that China outlaws physically forcing women to have abortions. ...
... This fondness for male children makes gendercide a preferable means for complying with China's one-child policy. Specifically, through genderselective abortion and abandonment or outright murder of female children, Chinese families reserve places in their limited child allotment for the potential birth of sons (Hershatter, 2004). The popularity of resorting to gendercide, these criticizers explain, has directly led to the gender ratio imbalance in China. ...
... In China, it is not unusual for almost twice as many males to receive higher education than females (Zhang, 2005). This causes women to account for 70% of illiterates in China, and only one-third of China's university graduates (Hershatter, 2004). Because natural population control is a result of literate females making reasoned decisions through knowledge and learning, figures like these show that the massive quantity of uneducated females in China will not lead to lower fertility rates without CPC regulations. ...
... Furthermore, recent studies explore how Chinese women participated in a wide array of work in social, cultural, and political spaces in wartime (Li 2010;Guo 2018;Barnes 2018). Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. ...
... Furthermore, recent studies explore how Chinese women participated in a wide array of work in social, cultural, and political spaces in wartime (Li 2010;Guo 2018;Barnes 2018). Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. ...
... Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. Zhao Ma (2015) explores lower-class women's tactics of coping with poverty during the Second Sino-Japanese War. ...
... Furthermore, recent studies explore how Chinese women participated in a wide array of work in social, cultural, and political spaces in wartime (Li 2010;Guo 2018;Barnes 2018). Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. ...
... Furthermore, recent studies explore how Chinese women participated in a wide array of work in social, cultural, and political spaces in wartime (Li 2010;Guo 2018;Barnes 2018). Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. ...
... Gail Hershatter (2007Hershatter ( , 2018 examines how women participated in wars, revolutions, and various campaigns during and after different battles. Hershatter (1997) and Christian Henriot (1997) respectively explore how women were dragged into the sex industry and how they acted and responded to the existing institutions under China's social, cultural, and political circumstances. Zhao Ma (2015) explores lower-class women's tactics of coping with poverty during the Second Sino-Japanese War. ...
“The Portraits of a Heroine: Huang Bamei and the Politics of Wartime History in China and Taiwan, 1930–1960.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 9.1 (2020): 7–39.
... Throughout the course of development in modern Chinese society, the feminine awareness as well as women's position in Chinese society has been fundamentally changed, whose concrete social appearance was seen booming during the period of late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the Republic of China . Amongst the recent literary researches and historical studies, some stressed the importance of traditional "Boudoir Culture" as the peephole into women's living space and social network, 1 [1]while some put emphasis on modern shaping and reshaping of women's culture from the most public perspectives of popularization and plebification, by making use of newspapers and magazines. 2 [3] [5]In addition, some highlight the rising and developing of women's political power under the national context of politics and warfare. ...
... Throughout the course of development in modern Chinese society, the feminine awareness as well as women's position in Chinese society has been fundamentally changed, whose concrete social appearance was seen booming during the period of late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the Republic of China . Amongst the recent literary researches and historical studies, some stressed the importance of traditional "Boudoir Culture" as the peephole into women's living space and social network, 1 [1]while some put emphasis on modern shaping and reshaping of women's culture from the most public perspectives of popularization and plebification, by making use of newspapers and magazines. 2 [3] [5]In addition, some highlight the rising and developing of women's political power under the national context of politics and warfare. ...
... [8] Professor David Der-wei Wang of Harvard University said "When we talk about Chinese authoress and the early feministic movement, one can never walk past Ding Ling". 1 [13] Ding Ling was the authoress who wrote the famous Miss Sophia's Diary, in which she created a brave young lady Sophia who was radicalized during the May Fourth Movement and decided to break free from her family as one of those so called "New Women". Sophia was open to romantic relationship and longing desperately for true love. ...
... Gender roles have changed differently in different countries (Saxonberg, 2013;Spivak, 1988). On the one hand, gender role changes have been hypothesized to be part of universal modernity processes stimulated by the emergence and diffusion of innovations by individuals and social movements (Glass and Fodor, 2007;Hershatter, 2004;Kara and Peterson, 2012;Pascall and Lewis, 2004;Saxonberg, 2013). If so, then countries showing cultural characteristics reflecting economic, technological and social modernization would show more change in traditional gender roles than would other countries. ...
... The global spread of gender relations typical of early adopters of technical and economic modernity in Anglo and northwestern European countries could be limited by traditional cultures (Hooper, 1984;Pascall and Lewis, 2004). Consequently, gender relations in the workplace might need to be overcome by coercive governmental interventions such as rules that reduce uncertainty, and by norms supporting powerful parties such as those used in the People's Republic of China (Hershatter, 2004;Hooper, 1984) and in CEE (Molyneux, 1990;Pascall and Lewis, 2004). ...
... For gender relations, we pay special attention to a nuance of power distance in countries like Russia and China that have been strongly influenced by Marxism. Rather than gender egalitarianism emerging from traditional cultural norms, such societies combine large power distance with a gender ideology imposed by a powerful elite that supports including women in professional and managerial roles (Hershatter, 2004;Hooper, 1984;Molyneux, 1990;Pascall and Manning, 2000). 3.5.1 Modernity and small power distance. ...
Purpose
The present study consists of managers and professionals in 26 countries including seven from Central and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether culture dimensions predict country differences in the relationship between gender and organizational commitment. The study integrated theories of social learning, role adjustment and exchange that link commitment to organizational roles to explain such differences in gender effects. Findings indicate that an alternative modernities perspective on theories of gender and commitment is better warranted than is a traditional modernities perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examined the relationship between gender and organizational commitment using primary data collected in 26 counties. The cross-level moderating effects of individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and restraint vs indulgence was examined using hierarchical linear modeling.
Findings
Organizational commitment is found to be higher among men than women in four countries (Australia, China, Hungary, Jamaica) and higher among women than men in two countries (Bulgaria and Romania). Results shows that large power distance, uncertainty avoidance, femininity (social goal emphasis) and restraint (vs indulgence) predict an association between being female and commitment. These all suggest limitations to the traditional modernity-based understanding of gender and the workplace.
Originality/value
This study is unique based on the three theories it integrates and because it tests the proposed hypothesis using a multi-level nested research design. Moreover, the results suggest a tension between an alternative modernities perspective on top-down governmental effects on commitment through exchange and bottom-up personal effects on commitment through social learning with role adjustment in an intermediate position.
... Ces migrantes étaient âgées de 14 à 25 ans et quittaient leur famille, alors que les hommes restaient au village pour cultiver la terre (Honig 1992). Les migrations étaient organisées en fonction des villages d'origine et permettaient de soumettre les travailleuses à un contrôle coutumier qui passait par des réseaux de parenté s'étendant souvent aux recruteurs de main-d'oeuvre, aux contremaîtres et aux locateurs qui fournissaient du logement (Hershatter 2007). Par conséquent, ces travailleuses demeuraient encadrées par les liens coutumiers traditionnels. ...
... La période maoïste aurait pu constituer une rupture avec ces rapports de sexage puisque le Parti communiste chinois visait l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes (Hershatter 2007). Le régime avait construit son modèle de développement sur un mélange de rupture et de continuité avec la structure sociale de l'ancien régime (Hinton 2008) et instauré un socialisme agraire dans lequel les terres et les moyens de production appartenaient aux collectivités locales, souvent centrées autour d'un regroupement de quelques villages. ...
... La famille était l'unité de base de ces collectivités, à partir de laquelle les petits lopins privés, les emplois et les ressources du collectif étaient distribués à la paysannerie, alors que les salaires de tous les membres de la famille étaient versés directement au père, qui en avait le contrôle effectif (Hershatter 2007). L'exogamie du mariage était inscrite dans la loi, alors que sa patrilocalité était garantie par l'organisation de la production (Johnson 1983). ...
Le développement capitaliste chinois a fait ressortir l'importance de la mobilisation des dagongmei, de jeunes travailleuses soumises à un régime de travail disciplinaire dans les industries exportatrices intégrées au marché mondial. Notre analyse socio-historique de la main-d'oeuvre féminine suggérant l'importance économique de l'appropriation du corps des femmes pour les familles chinoises, nous déduisons que des rapports de sexage historiquement constitués lient l'ancienne division sexuelle du travail de la Chine impériale avec le mode de régulation du travail que l'on peut retrouver dans les zones économiques spéciales. Ces rapports de sexage se retrouvant au coeur même du capitalisme, nous concluons qu'il est nécessaire de concevoir capitaliste et sexage sur le même plan ontologique, celui des pratiques sociales.
Chinese capitalist development has highlighted the importance of the mobilization of young workers subjected to a disciplinary work regime in export industries integrated into the world market, the dagongmei. Our socio-historical analysis of the female workforce suggesting the economic importance of the appropriation of women's bodies for Chinese families, we deduce that historically constituted sex relationships link the former sexual division of labor in Imperial China with the labor's mode of regulation found in the special economic zones. As these sex relations are found at the very heart of capitalism, we conclude that it is necessary to conceive capitalist and sexage on the same ontological level, that of social practices.
... The frst wave of publications, mostly Western, emerged when foreign scholars began visiting China in the 1970s. A large part of the studies after 1970 was written by anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of contemporary literature, and most attempted to reveal the lives of Chinese women (Hershatter, 2004). During the period, new variations were introduced in contrast to the previously universal image of Chinese women. ...
... Among studies conducted in the same period, Western scholars found a similar discrepancy between state rhetoric and what they observed in the feld. Perceptions drawn from feld studies substantially fortify the image of Chinese women formed from evidence collected in the 1970s and 1980s (see review by Hershatter, 2004). Explicitly, Chinese women from the period were described in terms of self-sacrifcial sexuality, oppressed by the traditional practices, and receiving no exceptional benefts from the social transformations. ...
China's rapid socio-economic development has achieved remarkable equalizing conditions between men and women in the aspects of health, education and labor force participation, but the glass ceiling phenomenon has become more prominent. The book develops a cross-disciplinary paradigm, with economics at its core, to better understand gender in China and women in management in the Chinese business context.
... The comparative and communist politics literature stresses the institutional penetration and regimentation of society by communist party-controlled organisations (Jowitt 1993;Ware 1996), whose purpose is to act as a reliable channel for top-down propaganda, political control and mobilisation. In the Chinese context, in parallel to the state bureaucracy, lower-level control organisations are mainly grassroots party committees and branches, as well as party-led mass organisations, that is, specialised organisations for social or occupational groups, the most prominent being the Federation of Trade Unions (zonggonghui), the Women's Federation (funü lianhehui) and the Communist Youth League (gongchan zhuyi qingnian tuan-CYL) (Hershatter 2004;Pringle 2011). ...
... It forced the All-China Women's Federation to develop its own issue-oriented sub-organisations, creating, for example, the Women's Studies Institute, and engage in pro-women advocacy and institution-building within the government. The Women's Federation, therefore, found a subtle way to engage with the government on specific issues without challenging party-state domination (Judd 2002;Hershatter 2004;Angeloff & Liebe 2010). As the state's role as social services provider decreased with market reforms, mass organisations, while maintaining their corporatist ties to the party, expanded their social reach and sources of funding through affiliated organisations over which they have varying degrees of control, a model that has been described as 'low-cost corporatism' . ...
Chinese campuses have been remarkably calm since the post-1989 repression. Yet, the absence of contention masks profound changes in the party-state’s campus management tactics, exemplifying the different approaches authoritarian regimes employ to regiment students. Based on fieldwork before and after Xi Jinping’s rise to power (2012), we analyse the party-state’s move from a ‘corporatist’ to a ‘partification’ strategy on campus. Contrary to the literature that sees apathy and depoliticisation as the goal of the party-state’s management of campuses, we argue that these changes reveal the regime’s apprehension about student alienation from official political channels and constitute an effort to reverse it.
... In response to this, the discourse that the most important thing for a woman is to be a virtuous wife and a caring mother becomes increasingly salient in popular culture. Hershatter (2007) argues that in recent years the discourse that a woman's essential role is to be a virtuous wife and a caring mother has regained popularity even though this discourse had become less prominent in the mid twentieth century. Hershatter (2007) writes: ...
... Hershatter (2007) argues that in recent years the discourse that a woman's essential role is to be a virtuous wife and a caring mother has regained popularity even though this discourse had become less prominent in the mid twentieth century. Hershatter (2007) writes: ...
This dissertation addresses the gendered implications of science and technology in the era of reforms. It argues that in this era, which began in 1978 and continues today, science and technology are highly romanticized as nearly omnipotent. This results in its being embedded not only into ordinary Chinese people’s lives, hoping to bring them positive changes, but also into the Chinese government’s political practices, hoping to achieve its political purposes through science and technology. It also points out that in the era of reforms, Chinese women’s lived experiences are full of tensions, struggles, and conflicts, as evidenced by the expectations for them to become virtuous wives, caring mothers, and, at the same time, successful professionals. The veneration of science and technology in Chinese culture and the Chinese government’s strict control over science and technology further complicate Chinese women’s experiences. To illustrate these points, I mainly use the analytical methods “articulation” and “mapping” from cultural studies to explore the impacts of Chinese myth, Confucianism and Daoism, Chinese language, Chinese political practices, and media and popular discourses to explain the status of science and technology and the living situation of Chinese women in the era of reforms. I analyze the cases of the development and use of science and technology: to promote marriage and family, for population control and family design, to promote the discourse of the super mother, and to help women gain independence and fight against sexual violence. I focus on the gendered implications of some specific scientific and technological artifacts, including dating websites, in vitro fertilization (IVF), breast pumps, social media, and many others. This dissertation contributes to understanding Chinese women and science and technology in contemporary China. It reveals that although Chinese women’s living situations have improved significantly, many of them are still trapped and subordinated. Science and technology, which are always articulated with other elements, especially the Chinese government’s politics, the traditional patriarchal culture, and many Chinese women’s demands for gender equality, aggravate many women’s suffering while also offering some of them extra job opportunities and access to virtual spaces to engage in social activism.
... Modern China has improved the empowerment of women's lives in areas of education and work [51,52]. For instance, the communist reforms in China since the 1950s has expanded women's role, especially women's freedom for their family lives with high autonomy. ...
... In keeping with their role as the first to adopt a novel product and transmit information about the new product to others, fashion trendsetters were not only oriented toward the future, but were culturally aware and receptive to new ideas from other cultures. These results may reflect the bipolar coexistence of Chinese consumers [51]; that is, globalization has generated a mix of modern (e.g., trendsetters and early adopters) and traditional (e.g., late and reluctant adopters) consumers in the young generation. ...
Current Chinese college students will become future consumers and fashion leaders. We examined, relying on a survey of 572 Chinese college students, which college students are trendsetters and followers. MANOVA results found four different innovation groups from trendsetters, to early adopters, to late adopters, and to reluctant adopters. ANOVA and regression results also found significant differences in cultural receptivity, cultural awareness, and future orientation between trendsetters and followers. The regression with the quadratic forms illustrated that the impact of trendsetting is not linear and becomes much larger for trendsetters but is almost none for the three follower groups. The piecewise regression revealed that the slope of the followers is flat, implying no relationship between the followers and cultural receptivity, awareness, and future orientation. However, the slope of the trendsetters is steep, implying a strong positive relationship between trendsetters and cultural attitudes such as cultural receptivity, cultural awareness, and future orientation.
... Gail Hershatter's work included oral history interviews with Chinese women in Shaanxi, revealing the political and economic lives of rural women in China during the collectivization period (Hershatter 2017). Hershatter points out that women improve their status in patriarchal families by serving the family (Hershatter 2004). Wang Zheng argues that the CPC assigns women to do community work, which appears to give them a public-sphere worker identity, but essentially extends women's gender roles from the private sphere (Wang 2005). ...
In the early years of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Communist Party then referred to as CPC implemented a series of equality policies in favor of women. This type of policy is reflected in the allocation of childcare labor resources, emphasizing the construction of women’s social welfare. However, China’s women’s welfare policies are influenced by overall political decision making and exhibit an unstable state. This study discusses the changes in the CPC’s childcare norms from 1949 to 1957. Using the laws and regulations issued by the CPC government from 1949 to 1957 and the news materials published from 1949 to 1957, this study classifies and discusses these first hand historical materials in different periods using the method of literature analysis. This study uses Friedman’s legal culture theory to analyze the interaction between the internal legal culture of the government representatives of the CPC and the external legal culture of the people’s representatives. This study finds that by exploring the process of the construction of women’s welfare policy of the PRC from 1949 to 1957, it can be clearly seen that under the condition of limited financial capacity, women’s welfare work is easily abolished due to other more important national socio-economic work. From these results, this study finally concludes that women’s liberation become a tool to serve the national construction under the discourse construction of the CPC.
... On the other hand, women are subject to both traditional and modern gender norms brought by China's embrace of "modernity" and "Western culture," both of which consider women the primary -in most cases the sole-caretaker in private spaces. While traditional gender norms prescribe the role of a "virtuous wife and good mother" (xian qi liang mu) (Robinson 1985), modern norms promote femininity in terms of differences, sexual appeal to men, motherhood, and consumerism (Hershatter 2004). ...
Do female legislators have different policy preferences than male legislators? Despite a large body of literature from liberal democracies and recent studies of electoral authoritarian regimes, this topic has received little attention in the context of single-party regimes. Based on quasi-experimental methods and regression models, we analyze original data from 38,383 proposals introduced during China’s 12th National People’s Congress and test the effect of gender on policies concerning conventionally selected feminine issues and “political stance,” issues that are unique to single-party regimes. The analysis confirms the effect of gender on policy preference across several feminine issues. However, the effect of gender is null on issues concerning political stance. Our findings suggest that while single-party regimes allow gender differences to emerge among legislators on issues that are not politically important, they tend to discourage such differences on politically prominent issues. This study advances the literature on both gender politics and authoritarian politics.
... Just as Ding Ling portrayed, all she had was nothing but "a small ray of mere thought like many other women at that time" [7]. Though radical intellectuals blamed the patriarchal joint family for thwarting individual development and perpetuating generational and gender hierarchies [8], their critics were mainly accepted in the urban areas. For women like Amao who was born out of central cities, they were not conscious of women's liberation. ...
In Ding Ling’s novels, she repeatedly adopted the diseased woman as the protagonist in order to present her own thinking of gender and social issues. By establishing a chronological reading of three protagonists, this paper will not only discuss the transformation of the metaphoric usage, but also explore socio-historical implications and gender issues in depth. To better understand both the features of Ding Ling’s artistic innovation and the transition of her identity, and more importantly, to reconfiguring the position of gender issues, this paper adopts the method of analysis and have close reading of three short stories written by Ding Ling, which are Sophia’s Diary, Girl Amao and When I Was in Xia Village, and combines the fictional stories with historical facts. In conclusion, Ding Ling’s depiction of diseased women gradually developed from a private narrative and imitation of romantism into a realistic style, revealing the struggles of peasant women who were damaged by the society, which suggested Ding Ling’s deconstruction of May Fourth discourse and exploration of her leftist identity.
... En outre, la construction de la « féminité » et de la « masculinité » est encore aujourd'hui centrée sur les rôles structurants père/mère et mari/femme. Tandis que de nombreux travaux insistent sur la transformation graduelle de la structure familiale d'une famille-souche ou étendue (voire lignagère dans le sud-est de la Chine) à une famille nucléaire (voir l'état des lieux d 'Hershatter [2004]) , Yan Yunxiang [1997 démontre à partir d'études de cas que la centralité émergente et progressivement établie de la relation conjugale change la structure de pouvoir à l'intérieur de la famille notamment au détriment du patriarche (le père de famille) : émergent alors de nouvelles dynamiques des relations familiales qui lui paraissent avoir plus d'influence sur les changements que le processus de nucléarisation. La conjugalité et l'horizontalité des relations impliquées produisent une véritable mutation de la famille traditionnelle qui avait généré un modèle structurel très vertical par une hiérarchisation fine, où chaque membre avait une position différenciée qui variait avec le cycle de vie sexué. ...
... Since we use the experiences of Chinese families as our case study, this interdisciplinary special issue contributes to the study of the contemporary Chinese family. The literature on Chinese families emphasises the power of the patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal structures and ideologies over family members, particularly women and younger generations (Wolf, 1972;Lavely, 1991;Evans, 1997;Hershatter, 2007). In this light, Chinese traditional values require family members to prioritise solidarity, filial piety, frugality and collective well-being over individual interests and restrict women to the domestic sphere in their reproductive roles as mothers, wives, daughtersin-law and carers. ...
Rapid economic growth in East Asia brings with it not only a development ‘miracle’ but also increased migration within and from China as well as in the Northeast–Southeast Asia corridors. The expanding migration flows make Chinese families in Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong one of the most noticeable groups whose life trajectory is punctuated by migration. This special issue is a collective endeavour to explore deeply the internal dynamics between Chinese family members across generations in regard to care, production and reproduction in light of the challenges and opportunities brought about by neoliberal globalisation.
... Indeed, advocacy of women's rights is ideologically orthodox-the Party has historically championed gender equality, 185 proclaiming that "women hold up half the sky." 186 But the ability of the Peking University Center to galvanize domestic support, rally civil society, and attract independent funding unsettled the establishment. 187 The government became increasingly less tolerant of the Center's activities. ...
The People’s Republic of China is embarking on an ambitious program to revolutionize its judicial institutions through information technology. Millions of cases have been published online as part of a move towards greater transparency. Courts are piloting artificial intelligence systems that promise to streamline adjudicatory processes and expand access to justice. Although other jurisdictions have employed statistical and computational methods to improve judicial decision-making, few have sought to exploit technology to the same degree. A way of understanding this exceptionalism is to view the integration of technology into law as a microcosm of China’s ambitions to emerge as a global artificial intelligence powerhouse and thereby establish itself in the first rank of nations.
Seen from a different perspective, however, the technologization of the legal system responds to certain oppositions in Chinese justice. First, courts today are straining under the burden of their caseloads. The contemporary turn towards legality has swelled the number of lawsuits while the professionalization of the judicial corps also culled its ranks. Artificial intelligence enhances the speed and consistency of adjudication while online disclosure cultivates public trust in the courts. Second, adherence to legal rules and forms restored normality to a society upended by revolutionary struggle but its inflexibility also foments dissatisfaction and disrupts relationships. The ensuing governmental imperative for judges to mediate disputes has resulted in coerced settlements and delayed verdicts. Machine predictions of case outcomes, supplied by courts, guide parties to bargain in the shadow of the law, thereby preserving the voluntariness of peace and the sanctity of justice. Third, while the party-state encourages citizens to know the law and use it as their weapon, civil society and activist lawyers may rally behind a legal cause to challenge the ideological hegemony of the party-state. By helping citizens learn the law and claim their rights, databases and applications foster legal consciousness while disintermediating lawyers.
Technological initiatives for administering justice simply, swiftly, and singly have thus blossomed in China because they relieve some of the tensions in its legal system. An original survey of roughly a thousand netizens and interviews of over a hundred legal aid seekers suggest that internet and artificial intelligence technologies have the potential to realize and refine a Chinese brand of authoritarian legality. But there is also a larger insight here that transcends jurisdictional boundaries and legal cultures. Obverse to the democratization of law is the marginalization of the legal profession. The advent of technology thus surfaces a tension between two dimensions of legality. The first dimension sees law as the disciplining of human conduct through rules. The second dimension, on the other hand, conceives of law as a dynamic force that, by responding to reason, has the potential to reshape the normative status quo. To the extent that lawyers are integral to the vitality of the legal order, innovations that displace them may also undermine one conception of the rule of law.
... Separately, Chu et al. (2012) depict 'techno-social tension under compressed modernity' from overlapping industrialization and 'cyberization'. ²⁷ Hershatter (2007). The figures may be exaggerated to some extent by the nonregistration of some girls until they go to high school or get married, when registration is required, but even allowing for this, the gap is pronounced. ...
This book proposes a new way to approach comparative international development by focusing on time and timing in economic and social development. The UK industrialized over two centuries, and then started to de-industrialize in the late 1960s. Today, the most rapid developers experience aspects of industrialization and de-industrialization simultaneously. It is no longer clear that industrialization offers the path of growth it once did; industrialization has become 'thin.' Demographic and social challenges that earlier developers faced sequentially now come at the same time. Rapid growers experience compression most acutely, but the spatial and temporal fusing of past and present is widespread, affecting high-, middle-, and lower-income countries alike.
Timing refers to the differences in historical periods in which development takes place. The geopolitical, institutional and technological environment for countries recently integrated into the global economy has been vastly different from that of the preceding postwar decades of 'embedded liberalism,' although it does contain echoes of the 'first globalization' and 'first financialization' a century ago. The first era of liberalism did not end well, and the second is similarly foundering on the rocks of nationalism and protectionism, as it is being battered by a global pandemic.
The authors propose an interdisciplinary conceptual framework based on co-evolving state-market and organization-technology dyads, which will help readers make sense of contemporary development across multiple societies, sectors and geographies, and provide a template for historical comparison.
... Admittedly, women's status has been significantly improved. However, there are still serious structural gender inequalities in contemporary Chinese society (Hershatter, 2004). In many cases, China's leadership examines the relationship with women's status from the standpoint of the patriarchy (Wolf, 1985). ...
Cultural practice and collective identity formation are crucial dimensions for the expression of agency within labour struggles. Although these have been eroded, alongside the erosion of the glory of the old urban working class in the post-reform era, working-class culture has played a significant role in China’s modern history of revolution and socialist industrialisation. This thesis investigates the cultural practices of Chinese rural-urban migrant workers in relation to history and to collective political struggles in the wave of labour unrest in post-reform China. Based on extended participant observation, fieldnotes and interviews over the course of a year between 2013 and 2014, mainly with two grass-roots labour organisations, my thesis answers the following questions: What kinds of collective identities and working-class/migrant workers’ culture do these new proletarian organisations construct? How do they understand and define the relationship between culture and collective struggle? What kinds of tensions are evidenced in the production of migrant workers’ culture? Focusing on how ideology, culture and collective identity are contested in relation to gender, class and workers’ resistance, the thesis contributes to better understanding of the on-going process of working class formation. My primary findings sustain the thesis that the migrant labour activists have devised a new version of collective identity and culture for migrant workers in order to contest the cultural hegemony of the state and the market, to raise class consciousness, build alliances and potentially mobilise their collective power to challenge the structural inequalities and injustices in contemporary China. They have developed ideological innovation and hybrid methods to communicate and articulate class identity, interests and political agendas both inexplicitly and explicitly. Moreover, through analysis of ethnographic data, I also reveal the dynamic nature and complexity in the process. The politically charged new version of collective identity and culture sometimes encounters difficulties in articulating itself to ordinary workers. The cultural practices of migrant labour 4 activists are constrained by various factors in the surveilled and limited political space in China. In order to mobilise resources to survive and sustain their struggle, various compromises are made in the interaction with other social actors and in turn, these inflect the representation of their cultural practices. Gender also revealed itself as a significant tension within the ongoing cultural practices of working class solidarity and collective identity construction. Solely stressing the axis of class in the construction of ‘new worker’ identity and the migrant worker’s culture, older male worker activists tended to ignore the gendered working class experiences of rural women migrant workers and activists in labour activism. Consequently, even as they sought to counter the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism in China, the cultural practices of the migrant worker organisations rendered women as subjects of resistance and reinforced the hegemony of patriarchy in Chinese society. This entrenched gender and class dilemma was challenged by the practice of women labour activists who proposed intersectional understandings of collective identities, incorporating gendered subjectivities into practice and expanding the struggle to the realm of social reproduction to liberate women worker’s agency in the class struggle and build broader alliances in striving for a more just society for all.
... Women in the socialist era were called on by the Communist Party to shed their 'bourgeois' housewife statuses in a conscious attempt to eradicate all capitalist elements of the 'decadent' West (Hershatter, 2007). This was done by assigning all women, whether married or unmarried, with or without children, lifelong jobs in the danwei (Liu, 2007). ...
The phenomenon of shengnü ('leftover women') has attracted much attention in recent years. Many of these single, never-married women have adopted the alternative partner choice strategy of choosing Western men, in the belief that they would be more open-minded about their accomplishments than patriarchal Chinese men. In this study of 17 shengnü's intercultural courtship experiences in Shanghai, it was found that they faced many caveats. In reality, it was difficult for them to find equally accomplished Western men who were looking for serious relationships. Those who were high-flying executives were often orientalist or licentious, and those who were unambitious were resented and scorned (by the women). Economic criteria aside, one key criterion that the Western men had to fulfil was to know Chinese in order to communicate with the women's parents. The topic of intercultural courtships brings to light the haigui (overseas returnee) identity of the shengnü who straddle the world of a global cosmopolitan professional elite, and the world of a developing Chinese economy where traditional features like filial piety and guanxi (social connections) still endure.
... Chinese state policies have been historically informed by traditional Confucian beliefs and practices related to gender and sexuality (Hershatter 2004;Mann 2011, xix). In the contemporary context, "multiple intersecting structures of inequality"-including gender, socioeconomic, and sexual inequalities-are reinforced by the state's withdrawal from social provisions, on the one hand, and its continued control over reproductive practices of citizens and their restriction to the legitimate space of "monogamous (heterosexual) [and registered] marriage" (Santos and Harrell 2017, 31- 32) on the other. ...
Marriage migration has developed as a discursive field and a new direction of governing practices in the relations of post-Mao China with Russia and Vietnam. This article examines China's developing governing regime for international marriages from the perspective of its sovereign concerns related to border stability, population management, and national security. These concerns are considered through the analysis of material and affective processes informing and shaping the regulations and representations of marriage migration to China. This discussion not only shows how the Chinese state revises its administrative and legal terms of international marriage, but also highlights the historical, racialized, and gendered forces that shape the process. The regulatory framework of marriage migration is informed by the shifting structures of feeling shaping the contours of belonging in Chinese society. These intersecting spheres of state affective and regulatory practices signal new relations of power and inequality coalescing in China's relations with its neighbors.
... in search of freedom, wealth, and new identities (Hershatter, 2004;Kong, 2016). In traditional Chinese culture, females are expected to remain in their hometowns into old age to provide physical labor and care as 'household laborers' and 'filial daughters' (Gaetano, 2004;Robinson, 1985;. ...
Individuals are said to be free to desire and free to choose their 'urban dreams' in China. This is not true. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of a WoW guild, we examine the lived stories and daily practices of these well-educated migrant gaming girls. The girls have usually been 'taken' to the metropolis, and their vulnerability lies in the fact they may not get adequate emotional or social support. It's all because of their 'outsider' identities rather than lack of requisite suzhi ('human quality'). A back-and-forth shuttling between popular massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like WoW and the 'real world' can help them regain or alter themselves. These enterprising-selves are ultimately thus accomplished. The desiring-selves part, to the contrary, is unable to be empowered by the digital real.
... "Women hold up half of the sky" and "Times have changed. Whatever men can do, women can do" (cited in Hershatter 2004in Hershatter : 1013. ...
The field of consumption and marketing has been changing dramatically, particularly with the growing ethnic consciousness, the higher emphasis on multiculturalism, and the global diffusion of consumer culture enhanced by the rapid increase of new technologies.
... Also in the 1990s, the study of women in China during the first half of the twentieth century and thereafter shifted its focus from the transformative power of the Chinese revolution to the more localized, segmented, and conflicting topics that originated out of the country's transformation from a socialist collective to a neoliberal consumer economy (Bailey, 2012;Hershatter, 2007). While scholars had previously examined women in the Republican era with regard to factory work (Hershatter, 1986;Honig, 1986), the 1990s publications expanded the topics of their inquiries. ...
This essay traces the evolution of Chinese women and gender studies in academia since the 1970s through a discussion of a number of prominent Western-language book publications that reveal changing scholarly approaches and attitudes toward this subject. It makes evident that within several generations the field has developed from a study favoured by left-leaning academics to a subject fed by multi-disciplinary approaches and integral to China scholarship. The review demonstrates how researchers sought sources and means to expose the once-buried literary and artistic achievements of imperial era women while modern history and literary experts as well as anthropologists and other social scientists countered long-standing narratives of women’s oppression, and pursued alternative scenarios to show how Chinese men and women have transformed their culture and society. There is also attention given to publications about masculinity, same-sex cultures, and the one-child policy. The review concludes that more contact between Western and Chinese scholars on women and gender studies will enrich and expand the dimensions of this field.
... This has long eroded women's chances of attaining gender parity on economic and social status. The attainment of gender parity could be through the participation of women in full-time jobs and paid employment outside their homes, which became routine for most urban women (Hershatter, 2007). However, structural changes in different economies, which have resulted in retrenchment due to government's privatisation policies, have further victimized women, with a broad array of unequal treatments and social forces underpinning their higher rates of discharge ( Dong and Pandey, 2012;Du and Dong, 2009). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among fertility, female education and female labour participation in ASEAN-7 countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, between 1990 and 2015. The choice of these countries is informed by their economic, social and political importance in the ASEAN Bloc; while Indonesia boasts of the largest population in ASEAN, Brunei and Malaysia boast of relatively advanced economies, in GDP terms.
Design/methodology/approach
Pesaran’s test of panel unit root in the presence of cross-sectional dependence was employed to test for the stationarity properties of the series. The dynamic long-run coefficients of the variables were examined using the pooled mean group, common correlated effect and dynamic OLS techniques, while the Granger causality test was used to estimate the direction of causality among the variables.
Findings
The findings indicate that there is both negative and positive relationship between fertility and labour force participation, with causality running from labour force participation through fertility – on the one hand, and between education and labour force participation, with no causality between the two – on the other hand.
Research limitations/implications
The study, therefore, upholds the role incompatibility and societal response hypothesis, as well as human capital and opportunity cost theories.
Practical implications
The appropriate policies are those that gear the countries’ fertility decisions towards the societal response hypothesis in order to enhance human capital development and increase productivity. This implies that the governments of ASEAN-7 countries should ease hindrances on a balanced combination of family-care and workforce participation on married women in view of the gender-wage gap created by female work apathy, which largely reduces domestic productivities. Appropriate policies in this direction include rising availability and affordability of childcare facilities, incentives for women higher education, attitudinal changes towards job-participating mothers, as well as legislated paid parental leaves which have balanced the, hitherto, incompatibility between work and childbearing.
Originality/value
Except for Abdullah et al. (2013), the authors have no knowledge of other authors who have worked on this relationship in the chosen ASEAN countries. This study is, however, an improvement upon that of Abdullah et al. (2013) in different ways, one of which is that it considers seven ASEAN countries, thus making the results more valid representation of the ASEAN Bloc. Furthermore, the Pesaran (2007) technique of unit root testing has not been found in any recent literature on the subject-matter. This technique, being a second-generation test, tests variable unit root in the presence of cross-sectional dependence.
... Although existing estimates of the illegal sex worker population vary dramatically, roughly 4 to 10 million women are involved in the sex trade in urban areas (Fu and Choy 2010). In short, the number of women engaging in the sex trade is proliferating (Farquhar 2002;Hershatter 2007;Osburg 2013), and the incidence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) is increasing at a dramatic rate in contemporary China (UNAIDS and MoH 2012;Yu et al. 2016a). ...
This paper examines the flexible labor of Chinese female sex workers (FSWs) by looking at their job mobility. We show the women’s flexible job mobility as an active strategy in addition to a direct response to the marketplace. Drawing upon in-depth interview data (n=175) during twenty-six months of ethnographic fieldwork in post-socialist China, we demonstrate the workers’ spatial mobility (i.e., holding jobs in multiple locations) and temporal mobility (i.e., changing jobs frequently), which are critical features of the women’s lived experiences. Our analysis shows that the women in the sex trade have high job mobility and that their multiple occupations include a wide range of work – from sex work to formal sectors. Their high job mobility stems from inventive negotiation that generates greater profits, increased stability, and reputational advantages. The findings pose three distinct challenges to the way sex work in China has been portrayed: (1) female sex workers can be excluded from the “general population”; (2) female sex workers can be labeled as a member of a particular sex worker category; and (3) the exclusive categorization between “commercial sex work” (e.g., xiaojie or prostitutes) and “transactional sex” (e.g., ernai or “second wife.”) The research demonstrates the strong agency of female sex workers even within adverse structural restraints, which contributes to existing discussions of whether sex work is voluntary or coerced.
... 13 The demise of the already weakening industry was hastened by incessant calls for reformation-ranging from a total ban on prostitu- tion proposed by the Committee on Moral Improvement (later known as the Moral Welfare League, formed in May 1918, and with primarily Christian and Western members) to pressure to eradicate courtesans as a "social devil" in the May Fourth discourse. 14 In this context, the close connection between Shanghai's amusement halls and the courtesan industry was reviewed or even challenged. The interplay of the courtesan industry, entertainment culture, and popular peri- odicals had long been established since Youxibao began providing updates on courtesan activities in 1896. ...
Shanghai of the early twentieth century represents the blossoming of urban culture in Modern China. With an extensive research on archival materials, this paper examines the amusement industry of the city by looking into the two major amusement halls, Great World (da shijie) and New World (xin shijie), and their associated tabloids, known as “amusement hall newspapers.” Specifically, it asks, “How might have women experienced amusement differently?” With the term pleasure seeker, this study surveys female visitors who were seeking fun in these amusement halls, whose existence has yet to be acknowledged. Second, it questions the presumed relationship between women and pleasure, object and subject of the gaze. It discusses in particular the presence of courtesans, actresses and female audience in such pleasurable mechanism.
Purpose
This study aims to examine why women transition from wage work to self-employed entrepreneurship, the seemingly insecure and unruly economic sector compared with the stable iron rice bowl and the fancy spring rice jobs.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on in-depth interviews in Zhejiang, the entrepreneurial hotbed in coastal China, this study examines the experiences of self-employed female entrepreneurs who used to work in the iron rice bowl and the spring rice jobs and explores their nonconventional career transition and its gendered implications.
Findings
This study finds that these women quit their previous jobs to escape from gendered suppression in wage work where their femininity was stereotyped, devalued or disciplined. By working for themselves, these women embrace a rubber rice bowl that allows them to improvise different forms of femininity that are better rewarded and recognized.
Originality/value
The study contributes to studies on gender and work by framing femininity as a fluid rather than a fixed set of qualities and fills the research gap by illustrating women’s agency in reacting to gender expectations in certain workplaces. The study develops a new concept of rubber rice bowl to describe how entrepreneurship, a seemingly women-unfriendly sphere, attracts women by allowing them to comply with, resist, or improvise normative gender expectations.
The formation of the Shanghai Women’s Commercial and Savings Bank (1924–1955) uncovers the legacy of an institution founded by a group of elite women. Although the women’s bank had limited capital and a small business scope, it reflected the contributions of enterprising women to the financial field when Chinese women’s roles were evolving and feminist rhetoric appealed to women’s economic independence. This article brings the achievements of such Chinese women to the forefront, as key figures in the development and direction of the Shanghai Women’s Bank. By exploring the anxieties and endeavors of the Shanghai Women’s Bank and shifting the focus to the female figures involved in shaping the bank, this article argues that they, alongside their elite social network, contributed to the bank’s longevity and portrayal in the media landscape. Although emphasizing gender in its initial creation, the bank ultimately pursued similar business strategies to other banks with both men and women working behind-the-scenes to uphold the institution. Moreover, this article contributes to a more inclusive history of women and finance in order to illuminate the endeavors of Chinese women in Shanghai banking amongst its global counterparts.
There is a big debate on the level of present-day female agency within the household in China. Even though the two sides of the debate make implicit assumptions on historical agency, a direct link is rarely established as we lack information on historical female agency among lower class households. In this paper we use a unique dataset on the ranking of women in the household for rural Yugan County (Jiangxi province, China) for the year 1947 when traditional households were still dominant.
The main conclusion is that, contrary to much of the classic literature on the subject, ranking among females in traditional Chinese households was much less rigid than expected, with most women being in charge at a certain point in their lives. This was mostly driven by gender-specific issues such as a son's taking over as the head of the household, thereby raising his wife's status, but with potential other daughters-in-law (wives of the brothers of the head of the household) ending up as assistants Yet, other factors also play a role. For example, we find a positive impact of traditional education on female agency.
9. Sexualités et intimités à l'épreuve du genre en Chine : quelques réagencements de normes et de valeurs Evelyne Micollier Durant la période postmaoïste, des transformations macrosociales et macroéconomiques de la société urbaine et rurale ont eu un impact significatif sur la condition et le statut des femmes, donc sur les rôles de genre, et sur les relations intimes et sexuelles. Dans les années 1980, Wolf [1985] avait constaté que la « révo-lution » avait été confisquée pour les femmes sur l'autel des réformes économiques et de l'ouverture vers une économie de marché. Ces réformes n'ont pas été pensées en vue d'intégrer ou de préserver les avancées en matière de droits des femmes acquis après 1949: elles ont, dans le même mouvement, contribué à une réassignation « genrée »à des rôles traditionnels aussi bien qu1à une réactualisation de ces rôles. À cela s'ajoute que les féministes chinoises de la scène académique et artistique postmaoïste ont revendiqué la reconnaissance et le droit à la différence entre hommes et femmes ainsi que l'égalité dans la différence. De cette situation polarisée et complexe, se dessine un retour « réagencé » de normes, de valeurs et de formes traditionnelles de sexualités et d'intimités, concomitant à l'émergence de formes nouvelles. On observe, en Chine, la cohabitation de plusieurs systèmes de représentations et de pratiques qui produisent des tensions à gérer et des négociations difficiles au niveau des valeurs, des comportements et des actions. Un premier système émane de la tradition chinoise plurielle et dynamique (discours local tradition-nel). Le second renvoie à un double système référentiel: l'un
Ce chapitre entend discuter de quelques réagencements de normes et de valeurs en matière de sexualités et de figures de l'intimité en Chine à l'ère des réformes (post-1979), en s'intéressant également aux sexualités non normatives, parce qu'elles éclairent en retour les sexualités normatives et les modalités de l'institution familiale. En discutant des pratiques et des représentations de la sexualité selon une perspective de genre, il invite à s'interroger sur les changements et les permanences de la structure et des relations familiales. Adopter une perspective de genre suggère d'informer sur la condition des personnes (vivre le genre) et sur la conceptualisation du genre (penser le genre).
Le bouddhisme chinois est entré depuis les années 1980 dans une période de « renouveau » entraînant des mutations de la vie religieuse, entre distanciation d’avec le passé dans un souci de modernisation, et réaffirmation du rapport à la tradition. Le temple Pushou (普寿寺), ouvert en 1991 sur le mont Wutai (五台山) en Chine, est à la croisée de ces processus de métamorphose. Ce temple modèle, la plus large institution pour les nonnes bouddhistes en Chine continentale, et hébergeant également un Institut d’études bouddhistes (中国五台山尼众佛学院), a choisi de se développer dans des domaines comme la discipline monastique, l’éducation, et la philanthropie. Pour couvrir ces différents aspects, il a d’ailleurs créé le projet « Trois-Plus-Un » (“三加一” 僧伽教育工程) en 2006, combinant les efforts de plusieurs institutions, les temples Pushou et Dacheng (大乘寺), l’association caritative Bodhi (菩提爱心协会), et la maison de retraite Qingtai (清泰安养园). Selon Rurui (如瑞, 1957- ), abbesse du temple Pushou, directrice de l’Institut, et instigatrice du projet, ces trois aspects sont indispensables au monachisme : l’élévation spirituelle est à la base de l’éducation du saṅgha, l’éducation est une assurance sur le futur, et la philanthropie un « moyen expédient ». On peut d’ailleurs voir dans leur coexistence une stratégie adoptée par le temple Pushou dans sa manière de « produire » le bouddhisme, en fonction des attentes de la communauté monastique et laïque, de la société séculière, et des instances politiques. À partir d’un travail ethnographique, cette recherche entend alors rendre compte de la façon dont le temple s’inscrit dans la vie religieuse et sociale en Chine, et de la façon dont ces éléments propres au bouddhisme contemporain se recomposent en son sein, participant ainsi à l’étude des mouvements du bouddhisme institutionnel contemporain en Chine continentale.
This qualitative study represents one of the early attempts to uncover the lived experience of thriving of top female leaders in the tourism and hospitality industry in China. Based on the narratives of 21 women executives in the hospitality and tourism industry in China, this study reveals that upper echelon (top management) females thrive by taking a gendered approach to life and career in a cultural environment with a strong Confucian tradition. This research systematically explored the unique gendered orientations and strategies these women executives used to achieve optimal functioning, as manifested in their thriving in both life and career. They acknowledge gender differences, embrace female qualities rather than deny them, and leverage these qualities to their advantage. The study findings offer significant theoretical and practical implications by illuminating a thriving perspective of the career advancement of women.
The present essay, beginning with Catholic press and various authors known in the sector of Missiology, underlines a connection between Song Meiling and Mission in general, particularly the Catholic ones. This work aims at adding a further piece to complete the already well-known Song Meiling’s career, after her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek. Further on, it will be clearly underlined the way she managed to established relationships with representatives of Missions, both Catholic and Protestant, thanks to the reform movement “New Life”, which brought Chinese people closer to Christian values. All this was possible by starting from the family dimension, thus enhancing the link between civil and religious society. Song Meiling’s strong point was the way she promoted social inclusion of the religious confessions, especially of the Catholic Missions, through solidarity initiatives, considering the religious community on the same level as the social community. This was a factor of potential development for the Church in China.
W sierpniu 1988 roku w chińskiej telewizji centralnej (CCTV) będącej pod kontrolą rządu i cenzury pojawił się sześcioodcinkowy serial dokumentalny pt. Elegia o rzece. Serial zgromadził przed telewizorami sporą publiczność, co mogło być spowodowane rewolucyjnymi tezami postawionymi w filmie. Po raz pierwszy w drugiej połowie XX wieku w tak szeroko dostępnym medium postawiono tezy o tym, że kultura chińska jest wsobna, a jedynie korzystanie z rozwiązań zachodnich (w gospodarce i demokratyzacji kraju) może sprawić, że Chiny wkroczą w nową, wspaniałą erę. Twórcy serialu zdekonstruowali uświęcone symbole cywilizacji chińskiej. W Elegii o rzece Chiny przestały być arkadyjską krainą smoka, przedstawione zostały raczej jako dystopiczne miejsce, które, by z niego wyjść, musi śmiało otworzyć się na świat zewnętrzny. Autorzy postulują całkowitą zmianę paradygmatu, która manifestować miałaby się w otwarciu w stronę niebieskiego oceanu, w stronę świata cywilizacji zachodniej. Uzyskanie nowej tożsamości narodowej i odejście od wegetacji kulturowej miałaby odbyć się poprzez budowę nowej utopii i reinterpretację symboli narodowych. Był to projekt na wskroś futurologiczny, mający silne oparcie w polityce realizowanej przez frakcję Zhao Ziyanga.
Child Marriage has been given a pre-eminent place in agendas addressing "harmful practices" as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. India leads the world in the number of women who marry below the age of 18 and therefore is of unique interest to international and national forums.
Refusing simplistic labels like "harmful practice", this book explores the complex history of child marriage as a social and feminist issue in India across different domains. It critically reviews a wide range of historical, demographic and legal scholarship on the subject. Major concepts relevant are analysed in a comparative framework that uncovers the unnoticed presence of the practice in the US and China. the volume questions existing approaches, analyses the latest data sources and develops a new concept of compulsory marriage.
A definitive study of child marriage in India in a changing global context, this book will interest scholars and students in the fields of women's, gender and sexuality studies, development studies and the social sciences. It will also be of great appeal to all those working with civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, states and international agencies in India and globally.
En este artículo reflexionaremos, a través de la lectura Bansheng yuan, la primera novela larga de Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), sobre la situación de la mujer china en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Con el análisis de los tres principales personajes femeninos nos centraremos en destacar dos aspectos que, a pesar de haber avanzado en la teoría, seguían lastrando la posición de la mujer en la práctica: la falta de independencia laboral y el matrimonio.
In 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).
This chapter pays attention to the girlhood of the first unbound feet generation in the pre-collective era. It examines the interplays between the social, economic and demographic changes caused by wars and revolution and such familial/household factors as family structure, son preference and capability for labour, going on to look at how they have shaped the girls’ labour and leisure lives when they were little and at mature girlhood respectively. It also suggests special power relations between them and their parents, especially their mothers.
This article examines wreckage and war as key elements in Zhang Ailing’s novella Qing cheng zhi lian 倾城之恋 (Love in a Fallen City) exploring the strategies used by the female protagonist to engage on a nüxing 女性 ‘feminist’-oriented spatial quest for independence in a male-centered world. Analysed from a feminist perspective, these strategies emerge as potentially empowering and based on the idea of conflict/conquest while dealing with man and romance, but they are also constantly threatened by the instability of history and by the lack of any true agency and gender-specific space for women in the 1940s Chinese society and culture. By analysing the floating/stability dichotomy and the spatial configurations of Shanghai and Hong Kong as described in the novella, the author argues Zhang Ailing’s depiction of Chinese women while dealing with history, society and the quest for self-affirmation is left in-between wreckage and survival, oppression and feminism, revealing her eccentric otherness as a woman and as a writer with respect to socially committed literature.
In this chapter, by reviewing the major scholarship focusing on the cultural politics of rural
migrant labour, I will tackle the following questions: how has the Party-state altered its ideological system and its own identity to the conditions of the political economy of global capitalism to reconcile exploitative forms of labour with its own founding narratives?1 How does the cultural politics of labour inform the issue of the changing relationship built between the Party-state and rural migrant workers, as well as with other subject categories? Moreover, the following complex question will be dealt with: how can the analysis of the cultural politics of rural workers’ labour inform the processes through which a “new field of articulation” is shaped where various forces such as the Party-state, contemporary capitalism, as well as the agency of rural migrant workers meet and are constituting the identity of the subject worker ( Pun 2005 : 7, 26).
From the Great Leap Forward (GLF) of 1958–1960 onwards, China's urban neighbourhood workshops and services mostly hired women. The GLF marked the beginning of a large-scale and irreversible trend towards near universal employment of women in China's cities. By the end of the Mao era, about 42 per cent of women working in industry were employed in “collectives” that were largely developed from urban neighbourhood industry. This article takes Shanghai as a case study to examine this type of employment for women in China. It documents the origin and development of the institution, explores the nuances of state–labour interactions at its site, and argues that as far as the enduring effects of women's participation in the workforce are concerned, the disastrous GLF was indeed the initiator and in this respect may well be seen as a blessing in disguise.
This book presents both theoretical research methods and practical uses of qualitative consumer and marketing research in Asia, as well as approaches to research with extended viewpoints and case studies on the specific research practices, identifying the distinctive characteristics and conditions of the Asian market. Starting with an introduction and a rationale for qualitative consumer and marketing research, which discuss interpretive research perspectives and key qualitative research traditions underlying the research, it then elaborates on research design, formulating research directions, research questions, research methods, research validity and reliability, as well as research ethics. The book goes on to cover various key data-collection techniques, such as interviews, focus groups, observation and ethnography, online observation and netnography, and other alternative tools like projective techniques, autodriving and diaries. These include design of research setting (samples and sampling strategy, context, time) and research procedures (from entry to access and completion of the research project) with resources planning. In addition, the book also addresses data analysis and interpretation as well as presentation, dissemination, and sharing of research results through both academic and practical courses. Lastly, it derives key concepts by reviewing classic research traditions and methods together with academic and practical studies.
Krittinee Nuttavuthisit is a full-time faculty member who teaches courses in consumption and marketing (MBA and Executive MBA) and qualitative consumer and marketing research (Ph.D.). A scholar of the King Anandamahidol Foundation in Thailand, she received her Ph.D. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Dr. Krittinee’s research interests include consumer experience, consumer well-being, transformative consumer research, and social marketing, and her work has been published in several leading journals, such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Business Horizon, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. She has also authored the book, Consumption and Marketing: The Asian Perspectives and Practices, and has been a weekly columnist for the leading business newspaper in Thailand, Krungthepturakij, since 2005. Her articles have been compiled into the four business books in Thai: Marketing Spectacles, Marketing Magnitude, Marketing Panorama, and Merry Marketing.
This introductory chapter opens with a historical account of single womanhood and creative work in China, followed by theoretical discussions on the two unique trajectories of our globalizing times that the subjects of this book straddle: single womanhood and creative work. While these Chinese women deal with the multiple demands of singlehood and creative jobs, what are their everyday struggles and pleasures? How do they take care of themselves in the midst of everyday precarity? The chapter explicates local modes of precarity implicated in global ideologies and imaginaries pertaining to womanhood and its intersection with creative labour. Ultimately, it holds up the case study of single women in Shanghai to argue for the limits of the politics of precarity, and proposes an ethics of care. The chapter introduces the 25 women who are the subjects of this book, and the methods used to converse with them. It ends by presenting the organizational logic of the book, and the gist of the subsequent chapters.
A pesquisa realiza um estudo comparado das experiências concretas de Rússia, China, Índia e Brasil acerca da implementação de políticas de proteção da mulher e redução da desigualdade de gênero. Numa perspectiva constitucional de análise, busca superar a comparação puramente nomológica ou doutrinaria, típica da visão clássica do Direito Comparado, em prol de uma comparação das experiências e das realidades. Para tal, lança mão de um complexo de dados coletados nos mais relevantes relatórios sobre o tema no contexto internacional, bem como, como contraponto crítico, do estudo aprofundado da literatura existente sobre o tema em cada um dos países, privilegiando as abordagens oferecidas pelas pesquisadoras e pesquisadores de fato inseridos na realidade de cada um desses países-continentes, à leituras puramente externas, sócio-culturalmente falando. Como principais resultados verificou-se que os quatro países padecem de problemas graves quanto à efetivação dos direitos de gênero e à garantia das condições de dignidades, liberdade e respeito das mulheres. Cada qual, porém, enfrentando dificuldades com caraterísticas singulares, no tratamento do tema.
A pesquisa realiza estudo comparado das experiências concretas de China, Índia e Brasil acerca da implementação de políticas de proteção da mulher e redução da desigualdade de gênero. Busca superar a comparação puramente nomológica ou doutrinaria, típica da visão clássica do Direito Comparado, em prol de uma comparação das experiências e das realidades. Para tal, lança mão de um complexo de dados coletados nos mais relevantes relatórios sobre o tema no contexto internacional e da literatura sobre o tema nesses países, privilegiando as abordagens oferecidas pelas pesquisadoras e pesquisadores de fato inseridos na realidade de cada um desses países-continentes.
This study focuses on two marginalized groups in Chinese society: 27-years old (or older) ‘left-over’ (never-married) women and divorced women. Both these kinds of women are subject to discrimination and ridicule by the mass media and even their own families. This essay argues that despite the economic prosperity China has enjoyed over the last thirty years, gender relations in the country are rooted in a patriarchal discourse that reveals a hybridity of old and new ideals – family responsibility and individual self-fulfillment – in which the pursuit of love and marital commitment cannot be divorced from larger social-cultural-economic structures that endorse intergenerational responsibility and obligation, as well as promote gender inequality in the home and workplace. For these two groups of ostracized women, romance with foreign men may seem an alternative to the constraints of this structural framework. Drawing from a pool of evidence, published interviews, media reports, and printed ethnographic studies, this study analyzes the predicaments of leftover and divorced women, the interactions between these women and foreign men, and what their experiences with these men say about gender and racial differences in relation to gender inequality.
How have the momentous policy shifts that followed the death of Mao Zedong changed families in China? What are the effects of the decollectivization of agriculture, the encouragement of limited private enterprise, and the world's strictest birth-control policy? Eleven chapters explore these and other questions here. They concern both urban and rural communities and range from intellectual to working-class families. The chapters that there is no single trend in Chinese family organization today, but rather a mosaic of forms and strategies which must be seen in the light of particular local conditions.
Until now our understanding of marriage in China has been based primarily on observations made during the twentieth century. The research of ten scholars that is presented here provides a new vision of marriage in Chinese history, exploring the complex interplay between marriage and the social, political, economic, and gender inequalities which have so characterized Chinese society.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, China's sovereignty was fragile at best. In the face of international pressure and domestic upheaval, young urban radicals—desperate for reforms that would save their nation—clamored for change, championing Western-inspired family reform and promoting free marriage choice and economic and emotional independence. But what came to be known as the New Culture Movement had the unwitting effect of fostering totalitarianism. This book examines how the link between family order and national salvation affected state building and explores its lasting consequences. The author argues that the replacement of the authoritarian, patriarchal, extended family structure with an egalitarian, conjugal family was a way for the nation to preserve crucial elements of its traditional culture. Her research shows that in the end, family reform paved the way for the Chinese Communist Party to establish a deeply intrusive state which undermined the legitimacy of individual rights.
This analysis of three generations of women in a Chinese silk factory interweaves the intimate details of observations with a broad-ranging critique of the meaning of modernity in a postmodern age. It is based at a silk factory in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China. The book compares the lives of three generations of women workers: those who entered the factory right around the Communist revolution in 1949, those who were youths during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, and those who have come of age in the Deng era. Exploring attitudes toward work, marriage, society, and culture, it connects the changing meanings of the modern in official discourse to the stories women tell about themselves and what they make of their lives.
The past two centuries have witnessed tremendous upheavals in every aspect of Chinese culture and society. At the level of everyday life, some of the most remarkable transformations have occurred in the realm of gender. This book is a mix of illuminating historical and ethnographic studies of gender from the 1700s to the present. The chapters are organized in pairs that alternate in focus between femininity and masculinity, between subjects traditionally associated with feminism (such as family life) and those rarely considered from a gendered point of view (like banditry). The chapters provide a wealth of interesting detail on such varied topics as court cases involving widows and homosexuals; ideal spouses of early-twentieth-century radicals; changing images of prostitutes; the masculinity of qigong masters; sexuality in the era of reform; and the eroticization of minorities.