Gender and Employment in Rural China by Jing Song (review)

In recent years, much scholarly attention has been devoted to China’s urbanization and industrialization processes and impacts on cities, towns, and urban populations—including migrant workers and their families. This new monograph by Jing Song, which developed from the author’s PhD dissertation, likewise focuses on urbanization and industrialization, but from the fresh perspective of villages and peasants. Song investigates how different pathways of rural development emerge in distinct places, how they impact their respective populations such as by creating new employment opportunities but also curtailing traditional occupations, and how villagers respond in diverse ways to these macro-economic changes. In particular, Song seeks to understand the gender dynamics of rural development by exploring how men and women are impacted differently by, and respond differently to, the transition to nonfarm employment and shifts in household divisions of labor that ensue. Her research indicates that economic development in rural China has largely reinforced patriarchy and gender inequality, in particular by reviving the traditional gendered, inside-outside, unequal division of labor. Yet, the market economy, industrialization, and urbanization have together created empowering new possibilities for women, especially for younger women due to their higher education. Song also counters the notion that rural residents, and especially youth, are increasingly individualized, by emphasizing the still prominent role of the family in coordinating economic strategy of household members, and the importance of family gender and generational dynamics. The study draws upon a decade’s worth of intermittent fieldwork in rural areas that included household interviews (with husbands and wives interviewed separately and jointly) and interviews with village officials, conducted by the author as part of a larger research team, and archival sources. Four villages serve as diverse case studies, each selected for the study due to its unique set of characteristics.

Chapter 1 introduces the book’s organization, main themes, and China’s economic development trajectory during the post-reform era. The central government’s approach to industrialization in the 1980s and early 1990s benefitted urban areas at the expense of rural areas, such as through “extractive” agricultural policies, with the result that, by the late 1990s, China had pronounced rural-urban inequality and peasants’ economic outlook was bleak. The government initiated new “harmonious” and “integrated” development policies in the 1990s and 2000s to address these problems. The case studies explore how particular villages and their populations differently experienced and seized upon these new initiatives. Song also reviews how gender, labor, and inequality have been interconnected in modern China. Despite the near universal participation of women in the workforce under socialism, gender equality was never fully realized, and it is further jeopardized in the post-reform period, as the state retreats from its gender equalization programs of labor participation. Song studies gender at the level of the household because in the post-reform era, labor allocation decisions are increasingly made by the family, rather than by the state or collectives. Considering macro-level policies and institutions together with meso-level gender and generational dynamics in the household and village society, Song is attentive to the interactions among peasant households, local cadres, and developers as they engage government policies and market forces.

Chapter 2 discusses the perennial “peasant question” and gender ideologies to understand rural women’s employment options and preferences in the transition from agriculture and how these are negotiated in the family. Song observes that the family economy continues to be of central importance to rural livelihoods and social welfare, even for youth who have gained the most autonomy through their participation in the market economy. She argues convincingly that the family should be regarded as a resource, and not just a constraint, on both individualism and gender equality. Rural women’s employment preferences are part of broader family strategies that in turn respond to changes in opportunity structures and resource constraints. Chapters 3 to 6 present each case study in turn, describing its discrete development pathway and how it has generated specific labor transition opportunities and gendered...