Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and Satellite Factory System in Taiwan. PingChun Hsiung. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1996. 182 pp. ISBN 1-56639-390-6. $44.95 cloth, $18.95 paper. At outset, Ping-Chun Hsiung makes it clear that purpose of her study is to describe the employment experience and family lives of married women in Taiwan's satellite factory system, She also says that book explores the intersections between capitalist logic and patriarchal pracaces, interplay of class formation and gender stratification, and linkage between individual, family/factory, state, and global restructuring. In doing research for her book, author has advantage of being indigenous researcher educated at UCLA. Hsiung also states that she is a Chinese feminist, who views existing class and gender inequalities in Taiwan with a critical eye. For purpose of obtaining data, she worked for 3 months in six different factories in central Taiwan in 1989 and visited many others. I approached book with a great deal of enthusiasm because of my interests in home-based economy. I was hoping that Hsiung's work would help me understand similarities and differences of economic function of family in Taiwan and in mainland China both now and in past. I also was interested in micro-macro linkage. On a more general level, I was curious about feminism, especially how it might be different from American feminism. However, I must admit before I go on that I was disappointed. My disappointments do not mean that book is short on scholarly merits. On contrary, I think it has a very good chapter on people, political, and economic backgrounds of Taiwan (Chapter 1). The discourse is succinct, informative, and readable. Chapter 2 is also well written. It provides history of living-room-as-factory program (keting ji gongchang) and an overview of labor law in Taiwan. Chapter 4 makes a strong case for hardship of working mothers and includes some of best narratives in book. My problem with study is that its own data, as they are presented, often contradict author's conclusions. I am particularly baffled by one of main themes that contends that married women, compared with unmarried, are more likely to be exploited by system: Married women's labor is more likely to be unrewarded in monetary terms: in 1987, about onetenth of married women worked as unpaid family workers as opposed to 1.5 percent or fewer of single, divorced, and widowed women. (p. …