“Full-time wife” and the change of gender order in the Chinese City

Alan Walker,Ying Fang

doi:10.1186/s40711-015-0006-x

Abstract

Work and family are the most critical of the contested terrains that determine the status of women in the gender order, the differing pattern of inequality between men and women. “Full-time wife” is a relatively new label in China, emerging only in the late twentieth century. It corresponds to the term “housewife” used in the 1950s and 1960s. Based on 59 in-depth interviews carried out between 2006 and 2007 in Guangzhou City, this article focuses on “full-time wives” and the dilemma they face in the conflict between family and work, an issue that is essential to an understanding of changing gender relations in China. The paper argues that a combination of the traditional Chinese gender order, improving wages of the family under the “socialist” market economy, and the rolling back of state protection was a key reason for the emergence of the full-time wife phenomenon. The analysis of the position of the full-time wife demonstrates how rolling back state protection affected women and specifically how it undermined the admittedly inconsistent advances in gender equality made in the previous era. For example, women now experience many new kinds of subordination, both in the labor market and the family. China’s market economy requires social policies that aim to improve the work-family balance in order to prevent or mitigate the further development of the market-constructed gender order.

Highlights

Reconciling family life and paid work is one of the most important issues in feminist theory
Based on an empirical study of the changes in gender order in present-day China, we argue that instead of holding back the policies that ensure gender equality, the state should remain the key guarantor of equality in the gender order
Women have entered the public sphere in very large numbers yet still occupy subordinate positions (Cha 2012)

Summary

Introduction

Reconciling family life and paid work is one of the most important issues in feminist theory. With the development of capitalism, large-scale production was separated from the family. Women were expected to stay at home to take care of family members while men’s primary duty was to enter the labor market to make money and support their families (Crompton 2006). This model of the family emerged in Western societies in the nineteenth century; it was initially a middle-class phenomenon and only became widespread among the working classes after the Second World War (Stacey 1996; Nicholson 1997). During the course of the twentieth century, the male breadwinner model was accompanied by institutional developments that reflected its basic assumptions in areas such as schooling, pensions, and the delivery of health and welfare services (Sainsbury 1999)

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Conclusion