Abstract
This chapter examines the first generation’s young motherhood period in the collective era (1956–1983). It looks into how the official division of labour between cadres and non-cadres, across gender, age, and marital status in the production team on the one hand, and changes in family structure, including uxorilocal marriage practice, new household division practice, and the rise of conjugal relationship within the family on the other, have shaped and in turn been shaped by the organisation of the women’s labour and leisure and the power relations with their husbands and parents-in-law. It emphasizes the organisation of childcare, and how their understandings of the hierarchal system as a young mother have affected their different investments in their sons’ and daughters’ future.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Picul: a unit of weight used in China and equal to about 60 kg.
- 2.
Yuan: Chinese currency. 1 GBP approximately equals to 12. 30 Yuan in 2008.
References
Andors, P. (1983). The unfinished liberation of Chinese women, 1949–1980. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books.
Bossen, L. (2002). Chinese women and rural development: Sixty years of change in Lu Village, Yunnan. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers INC.
Cohen, M. L. (1992). Family management and family division in contemporary rural China. China Quarterly, 130, 357–377.
Cohen, M. L. (1993). Cultural and political inventions in modern China: The case of the Chinese ‘peasant’. Daedalus, 122(2), 151–170.
Croll, E. (1985). Women and rural development in China: Production and reproduction. Geneva: International Labour Organization.
Davin, D. (1975). Women in the countryside of China. In M. Wolf & R. Witke (Eds.), Women in Chinese society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Davin, D. (1976). Women-work: Women and the party in revolutionary China. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Devasahayam, T. W. (2005). Power and pleasure around the stove: The construction of gendered identity in middle-class south Indian Hindu households in urban Malaysia. Women’s Studies International Forum, 28, 1–20.
Fei, H.-t., & Chang, C.-I. (1975, c1945). Earthbound China: A study of rural economy in Yunnan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gao, X. (2005). ‘Yin hua sai’: ershi shiji wushi niandai nongcun funv de xingbie fengong (‘Yin hua sai’: the gender division of labour among rural women in the 1950 s’). Shehuixue Yanjiu (Sociological Research), 4, 153–171+245.
Honig, E. (2000). Iron girls revisited: Gender and the politics of work in the cultural revolution. In B. Entwisle & G. E. Henderson (Eds.), Re-drawing boundaries: Work, households, and gender in China (pp. 1966–1976). Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
Huang, P. C. C. (1990). The peasant family and rural development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350–1988. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Jacka, T. (1997). Women’s work in rural China: Change and continuity in an era of reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jin, Y. (2006). Tieguniang zai sikao: Zhongguo wenhua geming qijian de xingbie yu laodong (Iron girls revisited: Gender and labour in Great Cultural Revolution in China), Shehuixue Yanjiu (Sociological Studies), 1.
Johnson, K. A. (1983). Women, the family, and peasant revolution in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Li, S., Feldman, M. W., & Jin, Xiaoyi. (2003). Marriage form and family division in three villages in rural China. Population Studies, 57(1), 95–108.
Li, S., Feldman, M. W., & Li, Nan. (2001). A comparative study of determinants of uxorilocal marriage in two counties of China. Social Biology, 48(1–2), 125–150.
Potter, S. H., & Potter, J. M. (1990). China’s peasants: The anthropology of a revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wang, Y. (2003). Jiti jingji shidai nongmin fenjia xingwei yanjiu: Yi Jinan nongcun wei zhongxin de kaocha (Household division of peasant during the period of the collective economy-A study to the rural South Hebei’). Zhongguo nongshi (Chinese Agricultural History), 2, 88–98.
Wolf, M. (1985). Revolution postponed: Women in contemporary China. California: Stanford University Press.
Zhang, J. (2004). Gongfenzhi xia nonghu de jingji xingwei: dui Qiayanuofu jiashuo de yanzheng yu buchong’ (‘The economic behaviour of peasants under the work-point system: a validation and supplement of Chayanov’s hypothesis’. Shehuixue Yanjiu (Sociological Studies), 6, 97–112.
Yan, Y. (2003). Private life under socialism: Love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village 1949–1999. Stanford California: Stanford University Press.
Yang, M M-h. (1994). Gifts, favours, and banquets: The art of social relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 East China University of Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Huang, Y. (2020). Working Young Mothers in the Collective. In: Transforming the Gendered Organisation of Labour and Leisure. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6438-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6438-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-6437-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-6438-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)