4. • Inferior vs. superior
• Inner space vs. outer space
• “women without talent is virtuous”
5. Historically women’s family status and
social status were very low
“A women must obey her father before
marriage, she must obey her husband after
marriage and she should also obey her sons
after the death of her husband”
Concubines, child brides, foot-binding
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Women’s role in Chinese
Revolution
Women to be freed from the whole
feudal-patriarchal system and ideology
11. Mao’s Report on the Peasant Movement
in Hunan (February 1927)
Women subject to the political authority,
the clan authority, the religious authority
and the authority of the husband – ‘four
thick ropes’
15. Miu Boying, the 1st female member of the CCP, joined the party in 1921
16.
17.
18.
19.
20. Women’s status in the Socialist
period (1949-1978)
Legal status
• The Common Program (September 21, 1949),
considered the Constitution before 1954.
• The implementation of the new Marriage Law
(1950)
21.
22. • Women were encouraged to participate social
production, become full members of the working class
• Lenin was often quoted: “In order to emancipate women
thoroughly and to realize real equality between women and
men, it is necessary to have public economy to let women
participate in joint production and labour, and then women
would stand in the same position as men.”
23. • Mao in the mid-1950s: women “form a vast reserve of labour
power which should be tapped in the struggle to build a great
socialist country.”
• In the 1960s: “Women and men are the same. What men can
do, women can do too.”
• “Women can hold up half the sky”
24. • The government believe that through employment,
women would acquire economic independence and
access to social resources which they could use in
bargaining to improve their position.
25. •Founded in March 1949
•Originally named as the All-
China Democratic Women's
Federation
•1957, Women’s Federation
of the PRC
•1978, All-China Women’s
Federation
•1995, NGO
The All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF)
26.
27. Mission: To represent and to safeguard women’s rights and
interests, and to promote equality between men and
women.
29. • Women in the urban area
•Broke the old division of labour – women entered
professions formerly hold only by men
•Wage distribution according to occupation and
equal pay for equal work
•Legal protection of the labour rights and interests
30. •Legal protection of the labour rights and interests
•Regulations on Labour Insurance (1953)
•The Regulations on the Protection of Female
Workers (1956)
31.
32.
33. • Mobilization of rural women
•Labour shortage in agriculture
•Drew women into full-time productive labour in the
fields as well as in light industries
•The socialization of household work
35. In 2000, the then Premier Zhu Rongji said: “China will continue
to reform state-owned enterprises. Ten years ago, our state-
owned enterprises accounted for around 2/3 of the entire
national economy, but now they account for only around 1/3 –
reorganizing them and then listing them on the securities
markets.”
36. Source: Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy, Figure 8.2 on page 187, 2007.
Laid-off and Unemployed Workers
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Million
Laid-off (Xiagang) Workers
Registered Unemployed
Newly Laid-off During Year
37. • Age
•Most laid-off workers are middle-aged. The proportion of laid-
off workers in the 36-40 age group accounted for 20.1%; that in
the 41-45 age group accounted for 13.1%, and that in the 46-
50 age group accounted for 13.1%. The total of these three age
groups accounted for 52.3%.
• Gender
•Women workers experienced a harder time than male workers
and were more highly represented among the unemployed.
• Education
•Women were blamed ‘suzhi di (low-human capital
accumulation)’
38. “Let women return home”
• In the 1980s
•“Let women return home” and leave the limited work
opportunities to “the most excellent and most efficient group” –
men
•Accompanied by a “periodic employment” system for women
• The end of 2000 and early 2001
•Discussions on adopting a “periodic employment” system for
women
•This policy failed to be written into the 10th Five-Year Plan of
National Economy and Social Development
•Equal employment opportunities for women
39.
40. New urban poor
• Once laid-off, these workers quickly become the new urban poor
•Only partially paid or not paid
•Less adequate safety net
• By 2001, between 20 million and 30 million laid-off workers fallen
into poverty nationwide, accounting for almost 13% of the urban
population.
• Loss of political privilege and social status that once accompanied
membership in the category of “worker”
• The whole working-class: income; social insurance
41. • The Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Project
(dibao)
•In 1999, the central government initiated a nationwide social
assistance project.
•Targeted vulnerable groups, most of them losing their jobs in
the urban areas, including those low- or un-skilled, chronically
ill or disabled.
44. The rise of precarious work
Domestic service
Other service work that requires femininity,
sexuality and deference
45.
46.
47.
48.
49. • Comparing to the manufacturing
workers, the service worker, alienates
crucial aspects of her personality,
sexuality, friendliness, and deference, in
the production of profit (Hochschild,
1983)
• Iron rice bowl—the rice bowl of youth
50. Workers in manufacturing
• Working conditions
•Does working in multinational corporations necessarily mean
better working conditions
•No!
