The Economics of Gender in China: Women, Work and the Glass Ceiling

242 Pages·2022·2.072 MB·English

by  Sisi Sung

The Economics of Gender
in China
China’s rapid socioeconomic 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 theoretical perspective integrates the knowledge and evidence from
cognate disciplinary strands, such as economics, sociology, management studies,
and the Chinese literature, into one unifed framework. In-depth interviews with
managers in China’s largest enterprises complement the theoretical perspective
with rich empirical details to examine women’s managerial experiences and
career choices. The book’s argument sheds light on the power of stereotypes
that specify women’s roles in the family, organization, and society. It shows
that understanding the socio-psychological and organizational dynamics of
stereotyping in the Chinese context, as well as how Chinese women make
career decisions, recognizing and deploying these expectations, provides new
perspectives on the underrepresentation of women among business leaders in
China.
The book ofers multidisciplinary evidence on the economics of gender in
China that is highly relevant for gender studies in general, and across a number
of subject areas, and it can be used in any setting as an introductory reference.
Sisi Sung is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced
Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany, and a research
fellow at Tsinghua University, China.
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The Economics of Gender in China
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The Economics of Gender
in China
Women, Work and the Glass Ceiling
Sisi Sung
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Sisi Sung
The right of Sisi Sung to be identifed as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.
com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
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
Names: Sung, Sisi, author.
Title: The economics of gender in China : women, work and the glass
ceiling / Sisi Sung.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2022017552 (print) | LCCN 2022017553 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032309941 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032309958 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003307563 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Employment—China. | Women—Economic
conditions—China. | Glass ceiling (Employment discrimination)—China.
Classifcation: LCC HD6200 .S86 2023 (print) | LCC HD6200 (ebook) |
DDC 331.40951—dc23/eng/20220419
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017552
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017553
ISBN: 978-1-032-30994-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-30995-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30756-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003307563
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Foreword vi
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Economics of Gender 7
3 Gender, Business Organization, and Culture 32
4 Women in China 69
5 Workplace in China 118
6 Gender Stereotypes in Chinese Enterprises 144
7 Work, Family, and Women in Management 176
8 Guanxi and Women in Management 194
9 Conclusion 219
Index 224
Foreword
In the decades after opening their frst stock markets in 1990, Chinese frms
have emerged as global leaders. In 2021, China led the way in the production
of electric vehicles as well as in the development of self-driving cars and smart
city innovations. They have been pathbreakers in e-commerce, and for almost
a decade, Chinese consumers have routinely used their phones for contactless
payments.
But dynamic progress has not been limited to the economy; one also sees
huge gains in human capital, most notably in an astounding increase in college
enrollments. In 1990 less than 2% of the adult population had a college degree;
25 years later it exceeded 15%. Most astounding has been the explosive growth
of educational opportunities for those born after 1980. In 1990 3.4% of the
college-age group was in college by 2000 it had risen to 12.5%, and by 2020
to 54%.1 And as Sisi Sung documents, over these past two decades of rapid
expansion of college enrollments, women reached parity with their male peers.
Moreover, because for several generations the vast majority of women,
including married women with children, worked full time outside the home,
women’s economic contributions have long been critical to the well-being of
their families and the health of the economy. But in the past ten years, a new
demographic challenge has further highlighted the vital role of women in the
workplace.
In 2020 17.4% of the population was 60 or older; by 2030 that percentage is
predicted to reach or exceed 25%.2 Thus within less than a decade China will
not only have the highest number of elderly in the world but because few over
age 60 will be fully employed, the percentage of the population who are no
longer in the labor force will skyrocket.
Simultaneous with the rapid aging of the population is a decline in the num-
ber of new entrants to the workforce. Not only did 30 years of a one-child pol-
icy shrink the size of new birth cohorts but the rapid increase in post-secondary
enrolments means that as older workers retire the workforce will shrink.
Under these conditions, the economy will become ever more dependent on
maintaining high levels of labor force participation among married women,
and in particular dependent on the employment of highly qualifed college
graduates working in managerial and professional positions. Yet in 2021 the
Foreword vii
World Economic Forum ranked China 107th of 156 countries in their Gender
Equality Index.3 Moreover, 2021 marked the thirteenth year in which China’s
rank declined, and of particular note was the low representation of women in
leadership positions in the corporate sector.
To explain the failure of women to translate their advanced educational cre-
dentials into workplace leadership, economist Sisi Sung ofers a path-breaking
analysis of the rarely studied case of “glass ceilings” in China. Through mastery
of scholarly debates in English and Chinese, Sung brings the Chinese experi-
ence into dialogue with a literature that has generally focused exclusively on
the challenges of college-educated women in the United States and the United
Kingdom. In addition, she stretches beyond discussions of the characteristics and
policies of the frm to incorporate broader cultural and sociological dimensions.
As an author, Sung is also in the vanguard of the discipline of economics. In
her analysis, assumptions about the primacy of individual utility maximization
and the power of statistical discrimination are foundational. But building on
the work of Nobel laureate George Akerlof and his coauthor Rachel Kranton,4
Sung frames her project in terms of the economics of identity. As a result, she
systematically explores and evaluates the various ways a societally constructed
sense of self and personal obligation is central to explaining why women are
largely absent at the apex of the Chinese corporate workplace.
Further deepening her analysis and establishing her own original voice, Sung
goes beyond Akerlof and Kranton, by integrating Judith Butler’s theory of
performativity and Nan Lin, Yanjie Bian, and Mayfair Yang’s discussions of the
Chinese relationship practices of guanxi.5 Because Sung foregrounds both the
motivations and consequences of interpersonal dynamics, individual choice and
agency are critical not tangential to explaining women’s failure to be promoted
to positions of authority and leadership.
The metaphor of a glass ceiling has long been used to explain persistent
gender diferentials in leadership, but in this monograph, Sung adds analytic
rigor by foregrounding the larger framing from the economics of identity and
by expanding its application to the experience of Chinese women working in
the corporate sector. Through masterful integration of theory and evidence, she
deftly creates dialogue with previous scholarship while incorporating extended
examples from her own feldwork and deep knowledge of Chinese history.
Undoubtedly, Sung herself will soon become an essential interlocutor for those
who follow her.
Deborah Davis
New Haven, Connecticut
April 10, 2022
“In a remarkable synthesis of economics, sociology, anthropology, of ancient
and modern Chinese history, and of Western and Chinese viewpoints, Sisi Sung
has given a subtle and convincing characterization of the position of women in
present-day China. The Economics of Gender in China should be read by everyone
who wants to see social science at its very best, including, of course, all those
with special interest in studies of gender and Chinese culture”.
– George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001
“This is an important monographic account of the role of women in the
contemporary economy, society, family and workplace in China from a multi-
disciplinary perspective. It captures the opportunities and barriers to women’s
managerial career advancement comprehensively, which contributes to the
global agenda of improving gender equality”.
– Dr Fang Lee Cooke, Fellow, the Academy of the Social Sciences
in Australia, Distinguished Professor, Monash Business School,
Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University
“The book is an important work with profound signifcance. It analyzes the
underrepresentation of women in China’s management positions and navigates
a path to break the glass ceiling such that courageous and competent Chinese
women can truly become ‘half of the sky’ among leaders and decision-makers”.
– Bohong Liu, Professor, China Women’s University, Former
Executive Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies
Preface
This book is about the economics of gender. The theme refects a long personal
and intellectual journey across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. It
started with six years at Ying Wa Girls’ School in Hong Kong, which helped me
realize the importance of achieving equality between men and women. As long
as men and women enjoyed the same educational opportunities, there would be
no limit on anyone’s pursuit of their goals. Soon after, I realized that situations
could in fact vary across contexts. I often found myself surrounded by mostly
male students in a classroom during my college years in Beijing. It did not seem
surprising for female students to be in the minority at this prestigious Chinese
science and engineering university. Although I also found myself among a
minority of women in a university department of economics in the United
States, the situation turned out to be quite diferent. The benefts, in particular
economic, resulting from men and women working together in parity had been
well recognized by many. During this time I saw female economists working
alongside each other and actively striving for equal status in the diverse areas
of the profession, namely academia, business, and government. The journey
continued when I was working in Germany. The opportunity enabled me to
observe the situation of gender equality in a nation headed by a female leader.
For the past decades, there has been remarkable progress in gender equality
worldwide. The situation of women has improved amid economic develop-
ment, and a growing number of women have entered top leadership positions
in many countries. Then I realized that the Chinese case manifests an especially
interesting dissociation in the performance of gender equality. On the one hand,
there has been outstanding progress in achieving equality between men and
women in education and health. The gender gap in labor market outcomes,
such as labor force participation and wages, has also been narrowing. On the
other hand, women’s representation in top leadership positions has dropped
from its highest level and stagnated since then. In my frst attempt to dive into
the paradox, I was fascinated by the fruitful feld of gender studies focused
on China. Despite the various perspectives available, I was also surprised to
see how little has been written about women in management in the Chinese
context. This encouraged me to start feld research in China and venture work
using a unifed economic paradigm to incorporate knowledge and evidence