The Re-Discovery of Gender Inequality: EU–China trade

Abstract

Christa Wichterich argues that in China, gender differences have been re-discovered in the course of liberalization, privatization and the marketization of the whole economy. Women's contributions to the economy are a comparative advantage of China competing in the world market. At the same time, gender has become a significant marker in the creation of new social classes in post-communist China, and the long standing claim of socialist policies for equal rights got subordinated to the imperative of fast economic growth. She suggests these processes were initiated by the Chinese government's ‘open door’-policies to set up a market economy; after China's World Trade Organization accession, they are increasingly driven by a complex interaction between domestic policies, and foreign trade and investment policies.