Organizer and Chair: Ellen Oxfeld, Middlebury College
Discussant: Elizabeth Croll, SOAS, University of London
The latest phase of economic restructuring in both the PRC and Taiwan has surely transformed both the ideology and practices surrounding women’s roles within families—as daughters, daughters-in-law, and wives. Or has it? Drawing from both rural and urban settings, these papers attempt to assess the degree to which recent structural changes in the economies of both the PRC and Taiwan have influenced both the discourses and distribution of power within families. Rather than assuming a static, one-dimensional distribution of power either before or after the economic changes under consideration, these papers attempt to consider the complex ways in which women’s roles in these economic transformations may reinforce, subvert, or reorganize existing intrafamilial power dynamics. The cases considered here include the following: (1) an examination of the impact of decollectivization coupled with underemployment on familial power dynamics in a southeast Chinese village; (2) an analysis of the impact of structural adjustment on marriage resistance amongst young women in Taiwan; and (3) a study of migrant rural women in a new economic zone, and a consideration of the impact of this employment on their intrafamilial roles. In each case, the authors try to go beyond a one-directional, or unidimensional understanding of either power or the influence of transformations in economic structures.
Submission and Subversion: Global Economy, Family, and Women’s Struggle in the Taiwan Context
Anru Lee, City University of New York
This paper compares the predicaments of two working women as their lives were affected by Taiwan’s recent industrial restructuring, namely relocation of capital overseas and reorganization of production in the country, as solutions to the problem of labor shortage. The two women discussed in the paper shared much in common: they were both in their early 30s; they were both unmarried; they had both been active in their family economy, and thus missed the opportunity to continue education to the degree they would have hoped; and they both insisted upon remaining single while struggling to go back to school. In spite of the similarities, their experiences were different in an important way. One woman’s decision to remain single and return to school caused a major disagreement in her family, whereas the other’s determination was respected by her family. Notwithstanding the specific family dynamics and individual personalities involved, I contend that two issues are particularly significant in explaining the different experiences of these two women. The first is their patterns of labor market participation, which reflect the ways in which each of their families participated in Taiwan’s economy. The second is their loci in the kinship system, that they had to find a culturally acceptable solution to remaining single at a comparatively old age.
Wives, Mothers, and Workers: Women’s Lives in the Dalian Economic Zone
Nancy Riley, Bowdoin College
The Dalian Economic Zone, in Northeast China, is a site of new urban growth, containing over 1,000 foreign and jointly owned enterprises. Most of the workers in the zone—a substantial proportion of them women—come from nearby rural areas, and their lives have undergone substantial change with their new urban residence and jobs. This paper will examine the changing ideology and practices surrounding women’s roles as wives, mothers, and workers in the Dalian Economic Zone. It will look at how the construction of urban and rural in the Chinese social, political, and economic landscape gives these women new and higher status, and underlies zone workers’ general satisfaction with their lives in the area. State discourse surrounding workers and workers rights (especially vis-á-vis the often foreign ownership and management of factories in the zone) has also provided women with the language to challenge some (but not all) inequities in the workplace. However, women’s roles as wives and mothers often undergo less change in this new environment. This paper will examine intrafamial structures and power in workers’ families in the economic zone. Women negotiate these power structures in ways different from those at work. Although by no means passive in their lives at home, they also use different means and forms to achieve personal goals. This paper will explore the reasons for the power structures within these transplanted rural families, with particular attention to state ideology in this area of workers’ lives.
The Woman Without a Daughter-in-Law: A New Balance of Power Within Rural Chinese Families?
Ellen Oxfeld, Middlebury College
This paper examines intrafamilial relationships within a Hakka village in southeast China, focusing in particular in the nexus of relationships between married daughters, mothers, and daughters-in-law. While employment in highly coveted wage earning positions can elevate even the youngest daughter to a position of great influence in her natal family, the role of the daughter-in-law has changed very little. This paper attempts to explain this seeming contradiction by examining the ways these roles intersect with two different economic spheres—an agricultural sphere not greatly changed since the rural reforms of the early 1980s and a sphere of wage employment in which opportunities are highly coveted but increasingly constricted. After an (all too brief) consideration of the impact of the political economy of the Maoist period in terms of its impact on gender roles, the paper then goes on to examine the contemporary situation. It concludes by illustrating the new tensions and contradictions in women’s roles through a comparison of the contrasting dilemmas faced by two families—one with no daughters, the other in search of a daughter-in-law.
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