‘I Didn’t Realise There Are So Many of Them’: Ethnic Chinese Women in Civic Life in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the under-studied gender dimensions of immigrants’ civic life by focusing on the role of ethnic Chinese women in community-led volunteering in Victoria, Australia. It integrates population-based cross-sectional data from the 2016 Australian Census and qualitative data gathered from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2016 to 2019. Census data identifies a more salient presence of ethnic Chinese women than ethnic Chinese men in civic life. Our interviews demonstrate that these women’s civic participation remains patterned and constrained by heteronormative gender norms which extend beyond the private sphere and the workplace to civic life. These empirical findings challenge both the overly optimistic presumption that equates civic presence of migrant women with civic empowerment or emancipation and the overly pessimistic presumption of them as inactive or marginalised civic actors. Taking a relational approach, the article argues that civic engagement among women from ethnic and migrant backgrounds should be studied in relation to, rather than isolated from, divergent gendered experiences in the labour market and domestic sphere.