Chinese Women - Living and Working (Asaa Women in Asia Series.)

203 Pages·2003·2.93 MB·English

by  Anne Mclaren

Chinese Women—Living and Working
This book presents significant new findings on new domains of employment for women in
China’s burgeoning market economy of the 1990s and the twenty-first century. Experts in
gender, politics, media studies and anthropology discuss the impact of economic reform
and globalization on Chinese women in family businesses, management, the professions,
the prostitution industry and domestic service. Significant themes include changing
marriage and consumer aspirations and the reinvention of domestic space. The volume
offers fresh insights into changing definitions of ‘women’s work’ in contemporary China
and questions women’s perceived ‘disadvantage’ in the market economy
Anne E.McLaren is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese literature, language and cultural
studies at the Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies, University of
Melbourne. She has published extensively on the popular culture of late imperial China,
women’s performance narratives, gender studies and Chinese marriage systems.
ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA
Women in Asia series
Editor: Louise Edwards Australian National University
Editorial board:
Susan Blackburn, Monash University
John Butcher, Griffith University
Vera Mackie, Curtin University
Anne McLaren, Melbourne University
Mina Roces, University of New South Wales
Andrea Whittaker, Melbourne University

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Chinese Women—Living and
Working
Edited by Anne E.McLaren
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2004
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2004 Anne E.McLaren for editorial matter and selection; individual
chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98723-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-31217-5 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors viii
Series editor’s foreword x
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
ANNE E.McLAREN
PART I ‘New’ domains in the Chinese market economy 17
1 Why women count: Chinese women and the leadership
of reform 19
DAVID S.G.GOODMAN
2 Femininity and authority: women in China’s private
sector 41
CLODAGH WYLIE
3 The maid in China: opportunities, challenges and the
story of becoming modern 63
WANNING SUN
4 Feminist prostitution debates: are there any sex workers
in China? 81
ELAINE JEFFREYS
PART II Women in the professions 103
5 Constraining women’s political work with ‘women’s
work’: the Chinese Communist Party and women’s
participation in politics 105
LOUISE EDWARDS
6 Women and technology in the teaching profession:
multi-literacy and curriculum impact 125
STEPHANIE HEMELRYK DONALD
vi
PART III Reinventing domestic space 141
7 Building for the future family 143
SALLY SARGESON
8 Women’s work and ritual space in China 163
ANNE E.McLAREN
Index 181
Illustrations
Plates
7.1 Villagers’ housing, Hangzhou, 1999 148
7.2 Contemporary ‘European-style villas’ in the Zhejiang countryside, 2000 155
Tables
1.1 Women in leadership positions: cadres and the new rich 23
1.2 Children of interviewees 24
1.3 Wives of the new rich and cadres: age and education 27
1.4 Wives of the new rich and cadres: birthplace 27
1.5 The new rich and cadres: education as a meeting place for marriage 29
1.6 Wives of the new rich: workplace 29
1.7 Wives of the new rich and cadres: occupation 31
2.1 Educational levels 45
2.2 Interview sample 46
2.3 Internet usage 54
5.1 Number and gender composition of deputies to the National People’s Congress 116
5.2 Number and gender composition of deputies to the Standing Committee of the
National People’s Congress 117
5.3 Number and gender composition of Chairs and Vice Chairs to the National
People’s Congress 117
5.4 Number and gender composition of deputies to the 8th 1993–1998 Local
People’s Congresses and their standing committees 117
5.5 Female members of the Political Bureau of the CCP in post-1949 China 118
5.6 Female members of the Party Central Committee in post-1949 China (full
members) 119
5.7 Female members of the Party Central Committee in post-1949 China
(alternate members) 119
Contributors
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is Associate Professor and Head of Film and
Television at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She has edited Media
in China: Content, Consumption, and Crisis (Curzon 2001) (with Michael Keane); Picturing
Power in the People’s Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution (1999) (with
Harriet Evans); and Belief in China; Art and Politics, Deities and Mortality (1996) (with
Robert Benewick). She has also authored the Global Media Atlas (2001), The State of
China Atlas (1999), and Public Secrets, Public Spaces; Cinema and Civility in China (2000).
Louise Edwards teaches Chinese and Asian Studies at the Australian National
University, Canberra. She is PhD graduate from Griffith University; her publications
include Men and Women in Qing China (E.J.Brill 1994, University of Hawaii, 2001),
Censored by Confucius (M.E.Sharpe, 1996) (with Kam Louie) and Women in Asia: Tradition,
Modernity and Globalisa tion (Allen & Unwin, University of Michigan Press, 2000) (with
Mina Roces).
David S.G.Goodman is Director of the Institute for International Studies, University
of Technology, Sydney. Recent publications include Social and Political Change in
Revolutionary China (2000); Shanxi in Reform: Everyday Life in a North China Province (2000);
and China’s Communist Revolutions (2002). He is currently completing a book on social
and political change in Shanxi Province during the 1990s.
Elaine Jeffreys lectures in Chinese Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.
She obtained her doctorate from the University of Melbourne, Department of Political
Science. Forthcoming is a book, China, Sex and Prostitution, from Routledge. She has
published widely on issues relating to the nature of Chinese studies, feminist theory and
activism, and the ‘selling and buying of sex’ in present-day China.
Anne E.McLaren is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese literature, language and culture at
the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include popular culture in late
imperial China, oral and literate culture and Chinese marriage systems. Publications
include Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantef ables (Leiden: Brill, 1998), Dress, Sex and
Text in Chinese Culture (co-edited with Antonia Finnane, Monash Asia Institute, 1999)
and The Chinese Femme Fatale: Stories from the Ming Period (University of Sydney East Asia
Monographs, 1994).
Sally Sargeson is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies
at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on local governance, labour and
ix
property relations in China. Her publications include Reworking China’s Proletariat (1999)
and the edited volume Collective Goods, Collective Actions in Asia (2002).
Wanning Sun is a native of Anhui Province, China. She teaches Media and
Communication Studies at the Faculty of Media, Culture and Society at Curtin
University of Technology, Western Australia. Sun Wanning is the author of Leaving
China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
She is currently working on gender, internal migration and social change in China.
Other research interests are Chinese media, media theory and analysis, gender and
media.
Clodagh Wylie completed a Master of Arts degree (2002) at the University of
Melbourne on the subject of Chinese women in the private sector. She was awarded
scholarships to study in Shanghai at both the East China Normal University and Fudan
University, in 1996 and 1998 respectively. In 1999 she conducted fieldwork on
Chinese women in Shanghai and Beijing. Currently she works for the Australian
Consulate in Shanghai.