Gendered Self-Improvement: Autonomous Personhood and the Marriage Predicament of Young Women in Urban China

Abstract

How does gender shape the experience and imaginaries of self-realisation? This article explores practices of self-improvement among young women in China, namely workshops for interpersonal skills. These practices direct participants to express themselves as autonomous persons, disembedded from social hierarchies and familial responsibilities. Unmarried women who attend workshops conceive of marriage as an unavoidable impediment to their self-realisation. This is due to a prevailing gender inequality in marriage, as well as the ongoing expansion of an ideal of individual autonomy in China through economic reforms. In this article, I do not centre my analysis on a cultural clash between this ideal and local cultural practices. Instead, it is the possibility of this ideal, which is always shaped and restricted by socio-economic imperatives, that induces women’s frustration with their local culture. The fact that this ideal promises universal attainment highlights for women the gender roles that limit their autonomy.