Resettlement in the Three Gorges Project

6 - Rural Women and Displacement

6 RURAL WOMEN AND DISPLACEMENT Gender inequality and limited study of woman migrants In China, regulations and laws - on land, labour and marriage, for instance - treat the status and roles of women as being the same as those of men. Women's decision-making power in the domestic field has improved noticeably (West et al. 1999; UNDP 2001) and women's social status showed significant improvements in most aspects during the 1990s (ACWF and CNSB 2001). Women's concerns have been integrated into the legislative framework and national socio-economic development plans, such as the Law on Protection of Women's Interest (1992), the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05) (NPCC 2001) and the Outline of Women's Development in China 2001-10. Nevertheless, there are vast differences in the status of women from urban and rural areas and between those voluntarily and involuntarily displaced. Despite the government's effort to empower women, to achieve gender equality is a distant goal (Hughes and Maurer-Fazio 2002). The transition from a planned to market-oriented economy in China has weakened the function of the 'household registration system' (hukou). Regional disparities in economic development among the coastal, central and western regions have generated a 'tidal wave' of rural labourers migrating to urban areas, especially to the coastal regions (Roberts 1997). Massive numbers of women have voluntarily joined the out-migration (Fan and Huang 1998; Zhang 1999a). Most of them are independent, self-motivated and economically oriented migrants (Fan 1999). Wide disparities between urban and rural regions, and severe population pressure on farmland are major factors influencing rural women's decision to migrate. Aspirations for improvements in their material, cultural and social lives, and an expectation of greater freedom, together with new knowledge and experiences have also played a key role in young women's determination to move out oftheir hometowns (Zhang 1999b). 146 Resettlement in the Three Gorges Pr(lject By and large, research on gender and migration did not appear in the literature on migration progress worldwide until the 1990s (Pedraza 1991; Chat and Radcliffe 1992). The displaced are conventionally referred to as 'people', rather than as women and men with different interests and aspirations (Mehta and Srinivasan 1999; Adams 2000). Colson (1999) observes that resettlement and rehabilitation plans tend to be flawed in their understanding of the effects of resettlement on the roles of women and men. Literature on how involuntary displacement affects the status, roles and development issues of female resettlers remains very limited (Parasuraman 1993; Sweetman 1998). In China, academic research in women's studies emerged in the mid-1980s (Min 1999). Since then, population movements have increased markedly, and studies which examine temporary and voluntary migration issues in China have begun to appear (Goldstein, A. et al. 1991; Goldstein and Goldstein 1991b; Yang 1994, 1996; Goldstein and Goldstein 1996; Yang and Guo 1996, 1999; Roberts 1997). Yet these studies mostly lump men and women together, or take gender as just one of many independent variables to examine migration differentials. Although some authors have looked at the roles of gender (Wei and Ma 1996), the patterns (He and Pooler 2002), dynamics and social problems in the process of voluntary migration (Fan and Huang 1998), limited research has been carried out on involuntary migration, especially development-induced displacement and resettlement (see Li et al. 2001). Little attention has been paid to women migrants who are involuntarily uprooted. This chapter attempts to fill part of that gap by examining the current situation of women resettlers associated with the TGP - their roles at household level, their socioeconomic status anddevelopmental issues. Three variables which shapetheir situations are analysed: institutional factors (such as hukou, resettlement policy and implementation), status of women (for instance, in terms of education) and economic factors (including productive activities). Using empirical data, this chapter examines common perceptions of both genders in the resettlement process; the socio-economic status of women at the household level; the greater likelihood of economic impoverishment for women than for men; and developmental issues which restrict the resettlement process. The analysis adopts a structural approach, which explains female migration in the contexts of historical transformations of national and regional economies, sociocultural constraints, and gendered segmentation of the labour market (Bennholdt-Thompson 1984; Caplan 1985). The hukou system, the local labour market, the status of women, contemporary economic and spatial restructuring, and resettlement policy and schemes impose constraints or produce opportunities for the displacement of women and their families. Displacement and resettlement associated with the TGP...