Abstract: Abstract Abstract Since 1978 China has been undergoing transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy and the opening up to international trade and investment. This process has been accelerated by WTO membership. This article presents an overview of the gendered processes and outcomes associated with China's reforms, mainly focusing on the post-1992 period when the pace of reforms accelerated. The imperative for accumulation and efficiency has resulted not only in impressive growth but also in the weakening of land rights for women, disproportionate layoffs for women workers in state enterprises, rising gender disparities in urban and rural wage employment, growing income insecurity, declining access to healthcare, and the adoption of Western/global commodified beauty standards. While jobs are expanding in new sectors and foreign-invested enterprises, these jobs are often associated with poor working conditions. This volume argues for reprioritizing equity and welfare on the policy agenda. Keywords: Gender inequalityfeminist economicseconomic transitionChinaJEL Codes: B54, B5, B Acknowledgments This volume would not have been possible without the support, dedication, and enthusiastic participation of many people. We would like to express our gratitude to Diana Strassmann, the editor of Feminist Economics, for her tireless, capable, and creative efforts in envisioning this volume, bringing us together as the editorial team, securing funding, and overseeing the special issue process, and to the journal's editorial staff, particularly Raj Mankad, Mónica Parle, and Anne Dayton, for their dedication, support, and patience in all stages of the journal editorial process and the Rice workshop preparation. We thank Rice University and the Ford Foundation - Beijing for their generous financial support of this volume and for making possible the opportunities for intellectual exchange among guest editors. We are also especially grateful to Anne and Albert Chao for sponsoring a workshop at Rice University in March 2006 that permitted the contributors to the volume to present their papers in advance of publication. The workshop provided a wonderful opportunity for wide-ranging and in-depth interactions among authors, editors, and discussants, who traveled to Houston from five countries spread across three continents, and greatly enhanced all aspects of the publication of this volume. The articles were also presented at the 2006 annual conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics and at sessions in the 2006 and 2007 Allied Social Science Association meetings. In addition to the authors of articles in this volume, discussants at the workshop and conference sessions were: Nancy Folbre, Malcolm Gillis, Joyce Jacobsen, Marion Jones, Betty Joseph, Chinhui Juhn, Janet Kohlhase, Steven W. Lewis, and Sarah Westpahl. We thank the discussants at these sessions for their useful comments. We owe special thanks to Joyce Jacobsen, who generously served as a discussant for almost all of the articles. We also thank Ebru Kongar and Minqi Li for comments on this paper. And finally, we are indebted to a large number of colleagues and scholars who served as anonymous reviewers of papers submitted for the Special Issue of Feminist Economics on Gender, China, and the WTO. Notes 1When international financial institutions or the reforms' academic proponents evaluate these reforms, they tend to focus on growth as the sole criterion for success, and they often overlook or minimize the costs of adjustment and the exploitative conditions of labor. At best, these assessments acknowledge the pain in store, without addressing the difficulties faced by those who bear the costs of adjustment. Jeffrey L. Gertler (2004 Gertler, Jeffrey L. 2004. "What China's WTO Accession is All About,". In China and the WTO, Edited by: Bhattasali, Deepak, Li, Shantong and Martin, Will. 21–28. Washington, DC: The World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 28) reflects this approach, in saying: "we can do little more than wish China and its people 'bon courage' as they venture down the extremely challenging path that stretches before them." 2Each of these methodological features contrasts with conventional economists' concerns with and approach to China's WTO accession as exemplified by Deepak Bhattasali, Shantong Li, and Will Martin (2004a Bhattasali, Deepak, Li, Shantong and Martin, Will. 2004a. China and the WTO: Accession, Policy Reform, and Poverty Reduction Strategies, Washington, DC: The World Bank. [Google Scholar]). 3The key features of these structural transition reforms are the reduction in the state's role in the economy (through privatization and deregulation), liberalization of trade, financial flows, and the FDI regime, and export-orientation. Policy-makers in developing countries implement these reforms, called structural adjustment programs (SAPs), following a stabilization program that involves a devaluation of the currency, fiscal austerity, tight monetary policy, and restraint on income policy. For feminist analyses see, for example, Lourdes Benería and Shelley Feldman (1992); Nahid Aslanbeigui, Steven Pressman, and Gale Summerfield (1994 Summerfield, Gale. 1994. "Economic Reform and the Employment of Chinese Women.". Journal of Economic Issues, 28(3): 715–732. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]); Isabella Bakker (1994 Bakker, Isabella. 1994. The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy, London: Zed Books. 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Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]) argues that by pursuing the dual track in prices in the phase-out of planned prices, the central government sought to both protect the weak from immediate exposure to market prices and maintain the legitimacy of reforms. Land policies and SOE reforms provide other examples. 5As in other socialist societies, in pre-reform China, there was a gap between the rhetoric and the reality of gender equality, partly due to the limitations in addressing domestic labor. As a result, despite commitment to the equal pay for equal work principle, in rural communes there was a gender-wage differential (because wage scales rewarded better the labor qualities associated with men, and women could not put in as much labor as men due to their household responsibilities). While programs sought to reduce women's individual household responsibilities, their availability and quality were uneven (Elisabeth Croll 1981 Croll, Elisabeth. 1981. "Women in Rural Production and Reproduction in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and Tanzania: Case Studies.". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 7(2): 375–399. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 6Between 1978 and 1993, the industrial output from and employment by TVEs grew at an average annual rate of 20.8 and 10.6 percent, respectively (National Bureau of Statistics [NBS]1994 National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). 2005. Statistical Yearbook, Beijing: China Statistical Press. [Google Scholar]: 362 – 3). By the mid-1990s, TVEs employed nearly 30 percent of the rural labor force and produced about half the exports of manufactured goods. 7Because of the lack of systematic statistics for the Chinese economy prior to 1978, the literature uses the gender-wage gap in the 1980s as an indicator for the situation prior to the reform. 8See Liu's contribution to this volume (2007) for the multiple categories of laid-off workers during the course of the SOE reforms, indicative of the experimental gradualism in policy and the concern for protecting the disadvantaged. 9During the SOE restructuring of the late 1990s, many firms used mandatory early retirement to downsize their workforce, requiring workers to retire up to five years earlier than the official retirement age. Thus, the gender-differentiated retirement age under central planning, which retired blue-collar women workers at 50 and men at 55, resulted in women being retired much earlier than men. 10China's Urban Labor Surveys show that the number of weekly work hours rose for both men and women between 1997 and 2002 but more sharply for women than for men – up by 1.7 hours for men and 2.0 hours for women – and the share of female workers who work overtime also increased from 26.9 to 39.9 percent (Dong et al. 2006 Dong, Xiao-yuan, Yang, Jianchun, Du, Fenglian and Ding, Sai. 2006. "Women's Employment and Public-Sector Restructuring: The Case of Urban China,". In Unemployment in China: Economy, Human Resources & Labor Markets, Edited by: Lee, Grace and Warner, Malcolm. 87–107. London: Routledge Contemporary China Series. [Google Scholar]). 11Based on China's Urban Labor Surveys, Dong et al. (2006 Dong, Xiao-yuan, Yang, Jianchun, Du, Fenglian and Ding, Sai. 2006. "Women's Employment and Public-Sector Restructuring: The Case of Urban China,". In Unemployment in China: Economy, Human Resources & Labor Markets, Edited by: Lee, Grace and Warner, Malcolm. 87–107. London: Routledge Contemporary China Series. [Google Scholar]) find that urban labor force participation rates declined dramatically between 1997 and 2002 from 78.6 to 71.6 percent for men and 64.6 to 54.1 percent for women. These estimates are consistent with figures obtained by Margaret Maurer-Fazio, James Hughes, and Dandan Zhang (2007 Maurer-Fazio, Margaret, Hughes, James and Zhang, Dandan. 2007. "An Ocean Formed from One Hundred Rivers: The Effects of Ethnicity, Gender, Marriage, and Location on Labor Force Participation in Urban China.". Feminist Economics, 13(3/4): 159–187. 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Statistical Yearbook, Beijing: China Statistical Press. [Google Scholar]: 21). 13Crowded and unsanitary dormitories, limited bathroom breaks during long shifts, and excessive work hours and obligatory overtime along with risky sexual behavior create health problems. These women tend to give up on healthcare because they have to pay out of pocket, and their work hours constrain access to health services (Tan, Zheng, and Song 2006 Tan, Lin, Zheng, Zhenzhen and Song, Yueping. 2006. "Trade Liberalization, Women's Migration and Reproductive Health in China,". In Trading Women's Health and Rights? Trade Liberalization and Reproductive Health in Developing Countries, Edited by: Grown, Caren, Braunstein, Elissa and Malhotra, Anju. 121–142. London: Zed Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 14Between 1978 and 2001 China's exports and imports grew at an annual average rate of 14.4 and 13.5 percent, respectively, and FDI increased by an average of 14.9 percent per year (NBS 2005 National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). 2005. Statistical Yearbook, Beijing: China Statistical Press. [Google Scholar]: Tables 18–3 and 18-13). 15Since its accession to the WTO China's exports and imports have increased sharply, from US$266.1 billion and $243.6 billion in 2001 to $593.3 billion and $561.2 billion in 2004, respectively, and FDI to China went up from $69.2 billion to $153.5 billion (NBS 2005 National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). 2005. Statistical Yearbook, Beijing: China Statistical Press. [Google Scholar]: Tables 18–3 and 18-13). 16Attracting more than forty billion US dollars of FDI each year since 1996, China has accounted for about one-third of total FDI inflows to developing countries (Naughton 2007 Naughton, Barry. 2007. The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar]: 401). 17For example, Linda Lim (1990 Lim, Linda. 1990. "Women's Work in Export Factories: the Politics of a Cause,". In Persistent Inequalities, Edited by: Tinker, Irene. 101–119. New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Naila Kabeer (2004 Kabeer, Naila. 2004. "Globalization, Labor Standards, and Women's Rights: Dilemmas of Collective (In)action in an Interdependent World.". Feminist Economics, 10(1): 3–35. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) argue that jobs in MNCs or in EPZs are worth protecting, as they offer better employment conditions for women compared to their alternatives in the local economy and a modicum of autonomy for women workers. See Elizabeth Fussell (2000 Fussell, Elizabeth. 2000. "Making Labor More Flexible: The Recomposition of Tijuana's Maquiladora Female Labor Force.". Feminist Economics, 6(3): 59–80. 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Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 39
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