To Your Health! Toasting, Intoxication and Gendered Critique among Banqueting Women

Abstract

Women entered government public health institutions in China in large numbers in the 2000s, thanks to a national professionalization project prioritizing meritocratic recruitment. To their disappointment, one of the consequences of their new professional involvement was that they were expected to drink heavily alongside men at frequent guanxi-building banquets. They responded by redefining heavy alcohol consumption as a morally deficient act that should have no place in government institutions. Their growing numbers and higher levels of educational achievement, ability to draw upon gendered norms to prioritize familial relationships and individual responsibilities, investment in disentangling individual professional development from drinking capabilities and ability to demonstrate the possibility of building networks without mutual intoxication allowed them to push this critique forward in ways that men could not. Their efforts met with limited success. Alcohol's role in building guanxi was diminished, but the women did not manage to eliminate the perceived necessity of banqueting.