Organizer: Kate Xiao Zhou, University of Hawai'I
Chair: Ellen R. Judd, University of Manitoba
Discussants: Martin Whyte, George Washington University; Feng Yuan, Chinese
Women's News
Rural reforms contributed importantly to the transition from state socialism to a market oriented economy in China, and have had a profound effect on the lives of many millions of women in the Chinese countryside. What roles have rural women played in this historical transformation? How have the reforms affected women in different parts of rural China? Has economic development helped or hurt rural women? The papers in this panel examine these issues from different but complementary perspectives, utilizing comparative case studies from several provinces. Ellen Judd focuses on rural women's organizational strategies in response to new economic opportunities in rural Shandong. Kate Xiao Zhou examines rural women's contributions to the creation of credit and labor markets in rural Hunan, Hubei, and Guangdong. George Brown writes on the effects of differential economic development on gender based educational disparities in rural Jiangsu. All three papers are based on field work in rural China.
Rural Women and Market Transition in China
Kate Xiao Zhou, University of Hawai'i
This paper examines rural women's role in the market transition and discusses how rural women have played an important role in Chinese economic development in the past 15 years. More specifically, the paper looks at the women's role in the spread of baochan daohu, the expansion of markets, the development of rural industry, the rise of corruption and the burst of migration. Most of the data will be based on personal interviews in three different provinces (Guangdong, Hubei and Hunan). The main theme of the paper argues that women played a key role in the formation of a spontaneous, unorganized, leaderless, non-ideological and apolitcal movement (SULNAM). This movement changed not only the substantive patterns of women's lives but also the context into which women's lives fit.
A Strategy for Economic Development for Rural Women in China in the 1990s
Ellen R. Judd, University of Manitoba
The rural economic reform program that reshaped China's countryside in the 1980s gave no attention to women's particular roles or to gender relations. Toward the end of the 1980s, some women within the Women's Federations (WFs) moved toward taking the WFs from their more traditional areas of concern into economic development work in the specific interests of women. One strategy within this general approach became formalized on the national level from 1989 as the "two studies, two comparisons set of activities" (shuangxue shuangbi huodong). The present paper examines the rationale, organization and actual activities of this formal initiative in the context of the changing political economy of one Shandong village, and contrasts this formal initiative with the informal initiatives of women independently successful in specialized households within the same village. Comparison is also made with the same strategy in less extensively studied communities. Discussion of the strategy is located within a critical comparative literature in the area of gender and development strategies in postsocialist societies.
Education and Gender Dispraities in Rural Jiangsu Province
George P. Brown, University of Missouri
Rural reforms in China have created new educational opportunities for some rural school children, but as some observers have noted, they have also created disincentives for children in some areas to attend schools. Given traditional attitudes that favor boys, we might expect to see striking gender disparities in rural school attendance and educational attainment, especially in areas where resources for education are limited and school fees are significant. To what extent are educational opportunities in rural China equal for girls? To what extent have provincial and local leaders promoted educational opportunities for females in rural areas? This paper uses data from Jiangsu Province to examine these questions. In it, I will compare different regions of rural Jiangsu in order to examine the effects of different levels of economic development on gender disparities in education. The paper is based on interviews with rural school teachers, women's cadres, and other village and township officials in three Jiangsu counties, and also utilizes census data and provincial and sub-provincial statistical data to generalize more broadly about female education opportunities in rural Jiangsu.