Gender and Work in Urban China: Women Workers of the Unlucky Generation

✍ Scribed by Jieyu Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 193
• Series: Routledge Contemporary China Series
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Although it is generally believed in China that socialism raised women’s status and paid work liberated them from the shackles of patriarchy, the economic reforms of the last two decades of the twentieth century meant women workers were more vulnerable to losing their jobs than men. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on the macro-structural features of this process, this book makes the voices of ordinary women workers heard and applies feminist perspectives on women and work to the Chinese situation.

Drawing upon extensive life history interviews, this book contests the view that mobilizing women into the workplace brought about their liberation. Instead, the gendered redundancy they experienced was the culmination of a lifetime’s experiences of gender inequalities. Setting their life stories against a backdrop of great social-political upheaval in China, the book suggests that the women of this ‘unlucky generation’ have borne the brunt of sufferings caused by sacrifices they made for the development of socialist China.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 6
Copyright......Page 7
Contents......Page 10
List of figures and tables......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 14
1 Introduction......Page 16
2 Researching Chinese women’s lives......Page 28
3 Growing up in the Mao era......Page 40
4 The danwei: Gender at work......Page 56
5 Living in the danwei: The intersection between work and family life......Page 80
6 Returning home......Page 102
7 Life has to go on......Page 122
8 Mothers’ pasts, daughters’ presents and futures......Page 140
9 Conclusion......Page 154
Appendix A: Characteristics of 33 women in the Mothers’ generation......Page 162
Appendix B: Comparison in education and job (aspiration) between Mothers and Daughters......Page 163
Appendix C: Biographical sketches of the interviewees......Page 164
Notes......Page 172
Bibliography......Page 178
Index......Page 190