This research explores the diverse lives of Chinese women with the aim of understanding their assertion of agency to overcome the patriarchal social structures inherent in contemporary mainland China. Through interviews with four Chinese women, I examine the means by which young women in post-reform era China attempt to realise their aspirations within the economic and political arena, and also within familial and social life.
At the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995, it was agreed that gender equality had to be tackled.[1] Gao Zhaoming suggests that the specificities of equality take on different values depending on context. Therefore, we must always ask whose equality are we seeking to define?[2] Twenty years on, gender equality is still a goal to be met in China, yet my study finds that, with cautious optimism, women can assert an agency that may reject patriarchy and help fulfil their contemporary desires.
Following gǎigé kāifàng 改革开放 (Reform and Opening Up) in 1989, China has shifted into a realm of economic and political activity that involves free markets and privatization.[3] This change has had a strong impact on social values, leading many young people to feel torn between tradition and modernity.[4]
On my year abroad in China, I experienced what it is like to live in an authoritarian society. With encouragement from Tania Branigan,[5] I took the opportunity to research the lives of four Chinese women born in the 1990’s and 1980’s, whom I met whilst studying Mandarin.
Ying and her mother: two ends of the spectrum
Ying was born in 1983 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. She studied Architecture at the University of Sheffield, UK and is now in charge of business development for an architecture design firm in Shanghai. Ying met her English husband Tom, in a bar in Shanghai. They were together for 5 years before deciding to get married, a choice supported by both Ying’s and Tom’s families.
In the first stage of our interview, I asked Ying to compare her life with that of her mother:
Our lives are completely different as we were born and raised pretty much at two different ends of the spectrum. My mum’s generation was the last bunch of the people who actually believed in Communism – they were brought up during the Cultural Revolution. They all had very little to start with in their life- compared to nowadays. When my mother started working- in her late 20s- she was living in the hospital staff compound, sharing with eight other nurses. Her living was paid by the state, and her wage was very low.
The experiences of Ying’s mother point to the past Chinese society and demonstrate the change that China has undergone in recent years. Analysing these differences can cast light on the stark contrast between the mother’s and Ying’s life experience, notably the change in living conditions due to the social development that China has experienced in the last two decades. Ying lives in a modern apartment in the city of Shanghai and embodies China’s social transition away from a collectivist and family orientated society.[6] As Yan Yunxiang suggests, this transition is not a smooth one as “age-old moral teachings of collective well-being” are still intersected in the new, more individualist, culture.[7] This is illustrated by Ying’s explanation of the common ground and differences between her and her mother:
I think our priorities are different in micro scale but similar in macro scale. My mum was very focused on her work and very determined in doing her job well. I think I inherited that from her. But I definitely spend lots more money, and am not so sensitive with money.
Perhaps Ying is representing the new “middle class” in China, a social group that David Goodman suggests has emerged post-reform (post-1978) China.[8] The one-child policy and economic progress have created an environment for more educated, wealthier people, forming a neo-liberal social class.[9] Thus the environment that Ying has grown up in has fostered her wealthy, more individualistic life that in turn reflects consumerism, democracy and progress.[10] Can this emerging middle class pursue egalitarian values for women? Chen stresses the need for young women to adopt roles as leaders to capitalise together on their confidence and fuse the discussion of gender into the everyday political conversation.[11]
Yet, it is debatable whether all levels of society will reap the gendered rewards of economic reform.[12] Understanding the intersection of opportunities and vulnerabilities that arise from reform helps to acknowledge the complex experiences of women in China. Undoubtedly not every woman in China can exercise individual agency in the same way as Ying.[13]
[1] Associated Press, “Gender equality still decades away, says chief of UN Women,” The Guardian, 6th March 2015, accessed 9th, March 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/gender-equality-still-decades-away-un-women.
[2] Gāo Zhàomíng, 高兆明, “Dāngdài zhōngguó yǔ jìng zhōng de“píngděng” 当代中国语境中的“平等”[“Equality” in Contemporary China], Huádōng shīfàn dàxué xuébào (zhéxué shèhuì kēxué bǎn) 华东师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版), no.6 (2012):142.
[3] Davis, Deborah S, and Feng, Wang, Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post Socialist China (USA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 5.
[4] Liu, Fengshu, “From degendering to (re)gendering the self: Chinese youth negotiating modern womanhood,” Gender and Education 26, no. 1 (2010):18.
[5] Tania Branigan is the China correspondent for The Guardian, based in Beijing.
[6] Harriet Evans, “The Gender of Communication: Changing Expectations of Mothers and Daughters in Urban China,” China Quarterly 204, (2010): 980.
[7] Ibid.
[8] David Goodman, The New Rich in China: Future rulers, present lives (London: Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis, 2008), 1.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Chen, L, 127.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
Marina Garvey Birch 