Understanding Urban Women’s Domestic-Role Orientation in Post-Mao China

Abstract

The present study examines the trend of urban women’s domestic role orientation in the wake of market transition in post-Mao China. During the 2005–7 period, we conducted in-depth interviews with 115 married women, who either currently held a job or had retreated to the home from workplaces, of both Mao and post-Mao cohorts in four large cities. It is found that women’s growing domestic orientation mainly stems from labor commodification and denigration, as the party-state scaled back its welfare provisions and commitment to social justice, on the one hand, and unleashed market forces, on the other. Therefore, women’s domestic orientation, rather than a mere reflection of persistent traditional culture, may be seen as their refusal to be commodified and passive resistance to labor denigration in the new age of economic liberalism. The findings also bear feminist and class implications of complex dynamics of capitalism.