Chair: Margaret Maurer-Fazio, Bates College

Organizer: Rachel Connelly, Bowdoin College

Discussant: Kenneth D Roberts, Southwestern University

Each of the four papers in this proposed interdisciplinary panel (economics, sociology, anthropology, demography) deals with the consequences for Chinese women of the rapid economic changes of the past two decades. These economic changes have led to substantial migration of women which affects both the "goers" and the "stayers". The "goers" face many new decisions such as those highlighted in Hong Zhang’s paper, "To Return or Not to Return? New Dilemmas and Opportunities Facing the Young Female" and in Nancy Riley’s work on migrant women in Northeast China, "Turning Discourse into Practice: Rural Women’s Pathways in Urban China." Many "goers" ultimately return to their rural homes and these women are the focus of Connelly, Roberts and Zheng’s paper, "The Effect of Chinese Women’s Migration on their Fertility and other Reproductive Health Issues." "Stayers" are also affected by migration such as Mauer-Fazio, Hughes and Zhang’s finding that rural women age 45 and older have been increasing their labor force participation and that agricultural work in China is increasingly done by women. Throughout China, work patterns have been changed both by migration and the other substantive changes in the economic life of the nation and these changed work patterns are the subject of Mauer-Fazio, Hughes and Zhang’s paper, "Economic Reforms, Gender and Changing Patterns of Labor Force Participation in Urban and Rural China." Zhang, Riley, Mauer-Fazio and Connelly will present their papers. Ken Roberts has agreed to act as a discussant for all four papers.

"To Return or Not to Return Home?" New Dilemmas and Opportunities Facing the Young Female Migrant Workers
Hong Zhang, Colby College

In China in the past two decades, migration has become a quintessential feature that defines the identity and life experiences of millions of young rural women who have left their home villages and migrated to urban areas for wage labor. Despite the fact that these migrants are most likely to find low wage, low-skill jobs and have to endure harsh working conditions, migration and urban work has been a liberating experience for many of them. Not only do they achieve some degree of economic independence through cash income, but they also gain self-confidence and broaden their life horizons. However, due to the combined effects of the continued Hukou system and women's traditional gender role for child care and household duties, many female migrants face difficult choices when it is time for them to get married: Should they return to their home village for marriage and give up their opportunity as wage earners? Are there other options besides returning to the countryside for marriage and family? What are they?  Should young female workers of rural origin get married and set up their family in the cities where they hold on to their paid job, how do they balance between family life and wage labor, adapting to an urban environment that is often hostile and discriminating? In this paper, drawing on my ethnographic study in the Pearl River Delta from 2004-5, I will address the questions mentioned above and explore the transformative power of labor migration and new life dilemmas facing female migrant workers.

Margaret Maurer-Fazio, Bates College

In this project, we employ data from the Chinese population censuses of 1982, 1990, and 2000 to examine reform-era changes in the patterns of male and female labor force participation and in the distribution of men’s and women’s occupational attainment. Very marked patterns of change emerge when we disaggregate the data by age cohort, marital status, sex, and rural/urban location. Women have decreased their labor force participation more than men, and urban women much more than rural women. Single young people in urban areas have decreased their labor force participation to stay in school to a much greater extent than single young people in rural areas. The urban elderly have decreased their rates of labor force participation while the rural elderly have increased theirs. We find some evidence of the feminization of agriculture.

Nancy Riley, Bowdoin College

Many of the reforms since the 1980s have given women, including rural migrants, new opportunities and even new sites in which to enact different (and sometimes individualized) versions of gender. At the same time, many of the discourses about gender remain rooted in ideologies and structures that began long before these recent economic reforms. Harriet Evans (1997:3) has argued that "earlier events, debates, writings, and beliefs established the epistemic foundation grounding the assumptions, perspectives, and parameters of...later debates" and, we could argue, behavior. This paper will focus on two of these discourses: 1) the separation (or its absence) between private and public spheres and 2) beliefs about the biological basis of gender differences. How do earlier debates influence and manifest themselves in current practices– both at the individual and at the policy level? And how do these debates, beliefs, and actions (which are admittedly abstract and theoretical) translate into the challenges facing migrant women today? Using data from an ethnographic study of migrant women in Northeast China, this paper trace the connections between discourse and empirical practices. I argue that understanding the history of these discourses allows us a better understanding and interpretation of rural women’s pathways to the cities and the choices they make there.

Rachel Connelly, Bowdoin College

One of the most significant effects of economic reform in China has been massive labor migration from rural areas. The direction of migration has been mainly from the rural to urban areas and from the less-developed middle to the more-developed eastern regions. While initially this migration was overwhelmingly male, women now make up a substantial portion of the labor migrants in China. Most of these migrants, both men and women, return to their villages regularly or after a few years. Our study examines the impact of labor migration on the migrant women who have returned to their rural homes focusing on the effect of having migrated on fertility and reproductive health. Other research from the same data has shown that neither marriage nor child-bearing are sufficient conditions for the women of rural Anhui and Sichuan to suspend migration (Roberts, Connelly, Zheng and Xie, The China Journal, 2005) Here we ask the questions, if child bearing does not stop migration, does migration reduce the number of the children women have? Does it affect the timing of births? Does it affect access to medical care with reference to reproductive health problems related to child bearing or to contracepting? Finally, does migration change one’s desired number of children and if so through what mechanism: is it through assimilation of urban views on child bearing or through increased income or increased educational aspirations for children?