As mentioned in the beginning of this part, the reform era is the only period when all three generations coexist. But how and why do they experience it disparately? The task of this chapter is to compare the life experiences of the ‘baby boomers’ generation’ and the ‘family planning generation’ in the reform era. They face a similar socio-economic context, but have different lives due to disparate familial/household factors such as life stages, education, family composition etc., all of which have shaped their organisation of labour and the power relations across gender and generation they are involved in. To some extent, this chapter is a continuation of both Chaps. 5 and 6. It begins with a brief introduction of the similar socio-economic context they are involved in, and then proceeds to how disparate familial/household factors cause different lives experiences for the two generations. At the same time, this chapter also discusses how the labour organisation configurations have affected agricultural development in Lianhe.

In the introduction to this part, I have clarified the external socio-economic environment the rural women faced in the reform era. Briefly speaking, firstly, farming became unprofitable after the first couple of years of de-collectivisation, which was due to the rural–urban segregation policies and the decreasing amount of farmland in the process of industrialisation. Secondly, economic activities such as domestic sidelines and ‘courtyard economy’, although formerly encouraged by the government as income-generating means for peasants, it could no longer guarantee a good profit in the long term. Besides, with the deepening of marketisation in the 1990s, township-village entrepreneurs which once supplied the main means of urbanisation of peasants in rural China have seen a decline (Field et al. 2006). Furthermore, the booming of township-village entrepreneurs was phenomenal in east and south China, but very limited in the inland and west areas. Thus, to a great extent, the prosperity of a rural household in inland Hanshui was determined by the proportion of non-agricultural income of the family members. The available non-agricultural economic activities included small businesses in the hometown or somewhere else; unskilled manual labour such as casual work on construction sites, or porters on the dock etc.; skilled manual labour such as a driver, mason, working in indoor painting and decoration, carpenter, hairdresser etc.; working in a local factory in the county town or other city, and so on. Generally speaking, non-agricultural occupations were more profitable than farming; and households with member(s) doing skilled labour were more prosperous than those without. Who does what, however, is a complex issue affected by the individual’s education, both schooling and vocational, working experience, the composition of the family and the division of labour across gender and age within the household. This chapter aims to reveal this complexity by contrasting the household division of labour for the three groups of women, and then comparing the husband-wife power relations for them. Based on the comparison between generations and gender groups, it also looks into how it will affect agricultural development.

1 Some Do This, Some Do that: Different Patterns of Household Labour Division

This section contrasts the household division of labour for the three groups of women, revealing what they and their family members were doing in the reform era and examining why the household division of labour took the pattern it did.

1.1 ‘Older Sisters’ Group: Farming Couples

From Chap. 5, we learnt that the ‘older sisters’ group got limited schooling education due to the urgent demand of labour and their birth order as the older children in their family. We also learnt that they had already been shaped into farming before the coming of the de-collectivisation and therefore they had few non-agricultural working experiences before getting married. That is why most of them stayed at home farming for the rest of their life. Their husbands have similar stories. Although as boys they could get special treatment in school education compared to older girls when they were young, they normally ended up back home farming if they could not achieve anything through school. And due to their age, when the collective was dismantled and non-farming occupations opened up, most of them had been married and fashioned into farmers. In other words, it was too late for them to learn skilled manual or non-farming occupations.

That’s why in Lianhe Village, in terms of household divisions of labour for the ‘older sisters’ group, I found, besides local cadres (including both women and men), that the commonest model of the gender division of labour between husband and wife is: both of them focus on farming, and the husband does some unskilled odd jobs such as a casual worker on construction site or a porter during the slow seasons. Among the 13 women, most of them focus only on farming and care of their family, except Ping-er who once tried a grocery business but failed and Pingzhi who worked as a casual worker on a construction site as well since her husband was a drunkard and did not care for his family at all. Pingzhi should have had a life better than this. Her husband was a driver for a local company and earned a good salary. But he had an affair with a married woman, whose husband claimed a big sum of money from him as compensation. Later, due to his drinking problem, he lost his job. After he went back home, he drank all day long, taking no care of Pingzhi and their two daughters. The elder daughter went for labour migration after finishing junior middle school. The younger daughter was academically promising and determined to go to college. Pingzhi took care of the farmland, did the domestic chores, and worked on construction sites to earn more money for her younger daughter’s tuition fees. She could not relax until her younger daughter was enrolled by a very good university and got student loan. Other women from this group mainly focus on farming and care of family. That also explains why the families of most ‘older sisters’ are at, or even below, an average level in terms of economic status in the village: few of them do non-farming occupations which is more profitable than farming.

1.2 ‘Younger Sisters’ Group: Triple Task

The stories of the ‘young sisters’ group are different. As mentioned in Chap. 5, they got more school education because of their birth order as the younger children. They even got more chances for non-farming occupational education and non-agricultural work experience during their girlhood with the coming of de-collectivisation, which provided them with ability and aspiration to look for income-generating opportunities other than farming after they married. Whether it was working in small businesses, such as tailoring, hairdressing, clothes stores, small restaurants, grocery stores (in their hometown or somewhere else) or working in a local factory in the county town or another city, all became options for them. Similar stories happened to their husbands. Normally as the younger sons of the family, their husbands were in a most favourable position: their gender and birth order offered them chances for school education on the one hand and the coming of the reform era supplied them with good opportunities to learn non-farming skilled manual jobs on the other. That is why compared to their older sisters’ family, the families of the ‘younger sisters’ group were normally better-off.

But it would be a simplification to say that this is the whole story for the ‘younger sisters’. Despite their capability and aspirations to become rich by non-farming occupations, most women from the ‘younger sisters’ group actually seemed unable to achieve their ambition to a satisfying extent. Many of them tried various non-agricultural occupations, but few have persisted for a long time. Why? We could find the answers from the following stories I got in Lianhe Village.

When I just arrived at Lianhe Village in October, 2005, a lot of women in their thirties were thinking about starting working in the textile factory mentioned in the previous chapter. They were encouraged by the stories of those women who were working in there. According to them, those workers could earn nearly 7000 Yuan each year, which was even more than the net annual income of a rural household at that time. Xiaohong, who was in her late thirties, not only refurbished the house but also bought an air-conditioner for her family less than two years after starting work in the textile factory. ‘If it was not for her income from the factory, they couldn’t afford that.’ Other women in the village commented. Besides Xiaohong, five other women had all been in that factory for more than one year.

Pingfang was one of those who were encouraged. She and two women neighbours, Xiuyu and Weiying, joined the workers. A shift system was adopted in the factory: morning shift from 6:30 am to 14:30 pm; early night shift from 14:30 pm to 22:30 pm; and late night shift from 22:30 pm to 6:30 am. The same shift lasted for four days. The daily wage for the new comers was eight Yuan. If they could attend eight or more machines at the same time after some time, they would become a formal worker and get paid by piece. The three women went to the factory together, since they were neighbours and shared the same type of position and shifts.

The first two days, according to Pingfang, were really demanding. The machines were running so fast that she could hardly keep up. ‘It was like someone was driving you with whip.’ She was soaking wet for the first two days, because of the heat on the shop-floor and the pressure. By the fifth day, she could handle five machines at the same time. But the real challenge was the late night shift. It was so hard for the new comers to get used to it. Pingfang felt unwell after the first late night shift. She had a headache and stomach-ache caused by hastily eaten meals and the need to drink lots of cold water. They only had 20 minutes for each meal. Many people brought their own meal box with them, grabbing a bite to eat on the shop-floor. And because of the dry air in the factory, they had to drink a lot of water. But there was no hot water provided, so they had to drink cold water they took with them in plastic bottles. Xiuyu felt great pain in her leg, since they had to stand all the time. Constipation was the common problem, including those who had been there for a long time.

After two late night shifts, when Xiuyu and Weiying came to join Pingfang for the third one, Pingfang was reluctant to go. The day before she had already spent several yuan medicine for stomach-aches and she did not want to spend more. Actually Xiuyu and Weiying also did not want to go any longer, so happily went back home. They worked there for 10 days, but according to the wage regulation of the factory if they worked less than one month, they would not be paid. So they got nothing in the end.

Actually when I stayed longer in the village, I discovered that many other women from the ‘younger sisters’ group had also been in that factory for a couple of days then stopped going. For example, Tiezhen, who was born in 1971, stayed there for three days before she stopped; another woman Xiangzhen, in the third team of the village, worked there for two days then came back home; about one month later, she returned and again only stayed there for two days. Why couldn’t these women stay longer? Actually many of them have been laughed at by the fellow villagers as being ‘lazy’ and because they ‘cannot endure hardship’. Are these fair judgements? Why could the other women mentioned above stay in the factory long enough? Besides physical suffering, what hindered those women who could not stay there long?

After meeting more women who shared a similar experience to Pingfang, Xiuyu and Weiying, I found that different family compositions and household divisions of labour held them back from working outside. As mentioned in Chap. 5, the nuclear family has become the dominant form for this group of women. They constitute a household with only their husband and children. Besides, due to high fertility, they usually have to share a mother-in-law with their sister(s)-in-law; and their mothers-in-law are normally old, say, in their sixties when they finish marrying all their children. All these basically make it infeasible for women like Pingfang to get much help from their mother-in-law with housework and childcare. On the other hand, since their husbands have got the capability and experiences of non-farming work, and the latter is more profitable than farming, they are more likely to concentrate on non-farming occupations while leaving farming, housework and children mainly to their wife.

In other words, if the women from this group would like to pursue their plans for non-farming occupations, they have to take on a ‘triple task’ burden. That is to say, they do farming, non-farming work, as well as housework and childcare all at the same time. This would no doubt leave conflicts for them. Besides, as mentioned in Chap. 6, in Lianhe, there used to be a primary school a few years ago, but it was closed down in the mid 1990s due to a shortage of students. A central primary school has been built in another village, for students from 10 villages around. It is a bit far from Lianhe, but most importantly, it is not safe enough for little children to go through the heavy traffic everyday, therefore sending them to school in the morning and then picking them up in the afternoon become a daily task for those little children’s family, which to some extent makes ‘triple tasks’ for this group of women more demanding.

Their struggle can be seen from this quote from Pingfang:

  1. Q:

    Why did you stop working in the textile factory after just 10 days?

  2. A:

    (Laughing) First of all, it was demanding for me, especially the late night shifts. I suffered from headaches, and even wanted to collapse. And more importantly, nobody took care of the family. My husband did not do any chores at all; my mother-in-law did not live with us and she would not give me a hand either. That day, when I came back from my first early night shift at about 11:00 pm, I found our cattle was still tied outside and had not been sent back to its shed; all the clothes were still hung outside. My husband actually did not go to do indoor painting and decoration that day. He had been played mahjong for the whole day in the grocery store. He cared for nothing.

  3. Q:

    Who picked up your son from school then?

  4. A:

    I did twice when I did not do the late night shifts, and mostly entrusted other fellow villagers when they also went to pick up their own children.

Xiuyu’s case is another example. While working in the factory she asked her father-in-law, who was living with her family, to feed their cattle every day. The old man did it for two days before he threatened to sell the cattle because he did not want to attend it any longer. Tiezhen, a woman mentioned above, worked in the factory for three days before she was asked back by her husband, who was driving a tractor taxi in the county town. Actually after that, Tiezhen even went to Shenzhen once, a city in South China, to work as a cook in a private nursery run by a relative of her brother-in-law. But she just stayed there one month before her husband rang her to ask her back home since ‘the house has been in a mess’. According to her, her husband is not a man who is patient enough with chores and children, so it would never be possible for her to work outside the home for a long time.

There are a couple of exceptions where women in their late thirties or early forties do non-farming work. But they managed it by giving up at least one or even two of their ‘triple tasks’. They may give up farming, leaving it to their husband. Or the whole family give up farming all together, focusing on non-agricultural occupations. Xiaohong, the woman mentioned above who paid for the renovation of her house and an air-conditioner for her family, has a husband who is seen as being ‘patient enough’ by other women from the village. He cooks meals, sends and collects their children from school and does farming when Xiaohong is working in the factory. Linhong, who is also in her late thirties, gave up farming with her husband who is driving a taxi in the county town. They rent a house somewhere near to her factory and her son’s school. So the boy can go back home on his own even if his parents are not available to pick him up, and Linhong can go out for night shifts without her husband’s company. In some extreme cases, the women give up all farming, housework and childcare to do non-farming work in city. A woman named Chunzhi, went to work in Shenzhen with her husband, leaving her 12 years old son behind, home alone, with his grandparents not far away. While I was in the village, I didn’t get to meet her since she was in Shenzhen, but I did meet the boy, who was in Grade Six of primary school at the time. He cycled to and from school every day, eating breakfast and lunch at school and dinner at grandparents’ home. I once went to his home. The whole house was covered in dust, and his room reeked of human urine. I guessed the smell was from a plastic basin in the corner where he urinated at night since there was no inside lavatory in the countryside. The action itself is common in Lianhe Village, but for most purposes, people rinse the basin in the morning to erase the smell. But this boy doesn’t do so as his mother is not around supervising his personal hygiene.

Most of them, however, just give up their aspirations of doing non-farming work, staying at home to attend fields and children; while their husbands mainly do non-farming occupations outside, giving a hand with farming only during busy seasons, or completely leaving the farming to their wife. This is the commonest pattern of household division of labour for this group of women. In other words, in Lianhe, although it is not like other places where most of the able-bodied men are far away working, there is still a trend of feminisation of farming for this group of women.

1.3 Ageing of Childcare and Farming: Division of Labour Within the Cooperative Family

But the case is very different for the third generation. Although many of them are only about 10 years younger than the women from the ‘younger sisters’ group of the second generation, due to the existence of the cooperative family outlined in Chap. 6, they often do not have to do much farming, housework or even childcare. This frees them into more profitable non-agricultural occupations, either in their hometown or in another city, and has made them ‘the most comfortable generation’. The following is an interview carried out in 2006 with Shichun, a woman who was born in 1976, has a uxorilocal marriage and is living with her husband, two daughters, aged 12 and 6, and her own parents.

  1. Q:

    Who attended/attend to your two daughters?

  2. A:

    Their grandma, my mom. She has always taken care of them ever since I had them. They both like to stay close to her. They seldom stay close to me.

  3. Q:

    So you must have an easy life in terms of childcare?

  4. A:

    Yes. I have never worried about childcare. The younger one, her grandpa, my dad, sends her to school every morning, and collects her in the afternoon. And she shares the same bed with her grandmother. The bigger one also shared a bed with her grandmother for many years till she went to junior middle school and lived in a dorm.

  5. Q:

    So it is a very easy task to be parents nowadays!

  6. A:

    Yes, you just have to give birth to them, and then your parents or your parent-in-law will take care of them.

  7. Q:

    Do you discipline them?

  8. A:

    Not much. Sometimes I give them a little bit of pocket money. But if I am not around, they ask their grandparents for pocket money.

  9. Q:

    You’ve been working outside since you got married?

  10. A:

    Yes, in different places.

  11. Q:

    Do you do much farming at all?

  12. A:

    Very little. You see, I have three shifts, how can I do farming?

  13. Q:

    How about your husband, does he do much farming?

  14. A:

    He is also working outside. He joined an electrical wire network reconstruction team last year. They worked nearby then, so he lived at home; but this year, they have been in Fujian Province for almost the whole year. He seldom does farming even if he is at home. He normally does non-farming work outside.

  15. Q:

    Who does the farming then?

  16. A:

    My parents. We have over eight mu fields, and all are planted by them.

  17. Q:

    What do you do after you come back from your work?

  18. A:

    Nothing! I haven’t washed clothes once since I started working three shifts and have not cooked much either. Before I do an early night shift, I want to play mahjong for a while since I have some time in the daytime; while after my late night shift, I will sleep in the morning, then I want to play mahjong again in the afternoon. (Laughing)

  19. Q:

    Play mahjong before you leave for work?

  20. A:

    Yes.

We can see that for the third generation, in terms of the division of labour within family, great changes have taken place both in childcare and farming. Unlike the women from the ‘younger sisters’ group in the second generation, young women from the third generation are freed both from childcare and farming by the old generation (couple) and thus can focus on non-agricultural occupations. This is due to the formation of the cooperative family. In other words, the traditional arrangement that mothers (-in-law) stay at home, taking care of grandchildren and chores while relying on income brought in by daughters (in-law) and sons again does not apply. Now the old generation not only has to take care of grandchildren, but also take responsibility for the farming as well.

As for childcare, what the parents (-in-law) of the third generation of women have to contribute is much more than what grandparents would have done in the traditional arrangement: for most purposes, they are not only minding their grandchildren, but are also taking over the responsibility of the parents to raise them. In other words, they are not only contributing time and attention, but also money. In Shichun’s story, we can see, besides cooking and washing clothes for their granddaughters, sending and collecting them from school and sharing bed with them, her parents also supply pocket money for them. In terms of the budget arrangements mentioned in Chap. 6, they belong to the ‘main budget with a minor account’ type. The old couple only have a minor account for their own use. That is why they cannot give their granddaughters anything more than pocket money. But for many women from the third generation, they are working away in cities in east or south China with their husband, leaving their child (ren) completely with their parents (-in-law). In this case, besides pocket money, the old couple normally also have to take on their grandchildren’s education fees, medical fees and so on. In terms of budget arrangements, this type of family normally belongs to a ‘two main budgets’ form, that is, the old couple and young couple have their own separate accounts. Haijing, the woman mentioned in Chap. 6, left her little daughter with her parents and went to work in an accessory assembling line with her husband in Zhejiang Province. According to her, besides some money they left at home before they set off for Zhejiang, they have not sent money back for their daughter’s nursery and pocket money. And according to Dongmei, besides the Chinese New Year gifts they bought for their parents when they came back from the eastern city of Ningbo, she and her husband have also not paid much for their son’s education and even medical operation fees, which have mostly been taken on by her parents. Lingxiang, a grandmother who is living with her husband and one-year-old grandson, complained that she only received 500 Yuan from her son and daughter-in-law (who are working in Guangzhou, south China) for the boy’s medical operation, which ended up actually costing them 1100 Yuan, not including the fees for follow-up checks and extra expenses on better food for the sick boy.

Grandparental rearing has become a common pattern for the third generation of women’s children, which has virtually put the grandparents under pressure to support their grandchildren with care, and most importantly, with money. Suoxiu, a woman in her early fifties, expressed her worry about grandchildren care, although her son who is working in Guangzhou is still unmarried:

Definitely he will get married in the near future, since he is in his late twenties. We are not a wealthy family. What if my son sends his child back home for us to raise? There’s a very good chance because he and his wife have to work, and this is what people are doing nowadays. They raise their grandchildren and buy good food for them. We have to do this as well. Otherwise, people will talk about you. Besides, you will feel guilty if others’ grandchildren can have good food while yours cannot. What can we do? The other day, I talked to my husband and that maybe the only option is for him to quit smoking and save some money.

But how will this arrangement affect this new grandparent-raised generation? How will this impact the existing inter-generational relation? Does this affect the elderly care arrangement of those grandparents? I will come back to these in Chap. 8 while discussing the elderly care of the prospective rural elders. But further observation and more academic attention are still needed.

Besides raising grandchildren, farming is also taken on mainly by the old couples in the cooperative family. At present, because of a limited number of children resulting from the family planning policy, a great majority of the new parents(-in-law) are still very young, say, in their late or even middle forties, when they finish marrying all their children and become grandparents. They are physically capable of taking on the whole responsibility of farming and care of the family. Another reason causing this division of labour is because the farmland is very limited at the moment. Due to the increasing demand on land for housing, along with the expansion of population and the expropriation of farmland for industrial use, the amount of farmable land has been gradually decreasing. And due to the existing policy, the amount of farmland a family owns has not increased with the coming of new family members, for example, daughters-in-law or new-born children. Thus the labour force provided by the old couple is enough as they have been planting the same, even smaller amount of land for many years. And the new labour force provided by the grown up children and new family members has become ‘surplus labour’ for the family, which makes non-agricultural occupations necessary for them if they want to improve the living standards of the family. All of these have shaped the fact that the ‘family planning generation’—boys or girls, husbands or wives—normally goes outside their hometown for non-agricultural occupations, while leaving the farming to their parents (-in-law).

2 From the ‘Feminization of Agriculture’ to the ‘Ageing of Farming Populations’: Demographic Transition and Agricultural Development

From the above analysis, we can see that peasants from different generations have different attitudes towards agriculture. During the decades after the reform and opening up, agriculture, as a main source of survival for the villagers in Lianhe, has experienced different labour division patterns within the family. The three groups of women, that is, the ‘older sisters’ and ‘younger sisters’ groups and those from the ‘family planning generation’, have developed disparate relationship with farming. For the women of the ‘older sisters’ group, it is almost impossible for them to get rid of agriculture, and their lives are mainly dominated by farming and care of family; while the ‘younger sisters’ group has the intention to get higher income by engaging in non-agricultural industries, they are mostly unable to achieve this because of being bound by housework and child care; and the women of the ‘family planning generation’, as long as they come from a ‘cooperative family’, they are basically free from the drag of housework, child care and farming, and can concentrate on non-agricultural work.

How will this affect agricultural development in Lianhe? One of the topics about agricultural development being widely discussed in academia in the reform era is the ‘feminization of agriculture’. This seems to be a common problem for developing countries. But is China facing the same problems as other developing countries? This section explores the relationship between demographic transition and agricultural development since the reform and opening up in the context of the general problem of ‘feminization of agriculture’. It first briefly reviews the research literature in this area, and then discusses the problem in the context of Lianhe Village.

2.1 ‘Feminization of Agriculture’ and Its Chinese Context: A Brief Review

Who has been working on China’s farms since the economic reform? For this question, there have been mainly two schools of views. Based on qualitative and descriptive evidence, feminist scholars suggest that able-bodied rural women were left to farm by their husbands, who migrate to cities to earn more money through non-farming work, and rural Chinese women are taking over farming in specific villages in Shandong (Judd 1994), Sichuan (Jacka 1997), Yunnan (Bossen 2002) and Henan (Ren and Dong 1997). M. Wolf found that, in 1985 in villages in Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Shaanxi, rural women took up 59–88% of farming (Gao 1994). This arrangement has complicated consequences. On the one hand, with husbands absent, women could make their contribution more visible and therefore earn some household bargaining power. At the same time, playing a larger role in farming and family management could advance their self-consciousness and independence. On the other hand, the increased labour time and excessive responsibilities, however, could be harmful to their physical and mental health (Ren and Dong 1997: 184–185). Others worry that the dominant role of rural women, who are often less educated than rural men, will negatively impact China’s agriculture in terms of its operation, structure, and the promotion of agricultural skills, which will decrease productivity and further threaten national food security (UNDP 2003; Yu et al. 2009).

A counter conclusion is offered by some agricultural economists whose works are based on quantitative and empirical studies. For example, based on household survey data, Alan de Brauw suggests that the proportion of farm work done by women declined over the late 1990s, and concludes that future feminization of agriculture in China is unlikely (2003). Linxiu Zhang and her co-authors propose that even though rural women are left in charge of farming, crop productivity does not fall (Zhang et al. 2004). In a recent article, Alan de Brauw and his co-authors (2008) claim to debunk the ‘myth’ surrounding Chinese women’s participation in farming and suggest that the feminization of agriculture in China is not occurring. Even if women were taking over Chinese farms, the consequences would be mostly positive rather than negative from a labour supply, productivity, and income point of view.

The analyses from both sides focus on particular areas. Even though the quantitative studies are based on large scale statistical datasets, the datasets were collected in certain provinces. Therefore none of them can claim to represent the situation of the entire country. The quantitative studies, especially that of de Brauw et al., correctly point out that a weakness of most descriptive studies is that they tend to treat rural Chinese women as if they all belong to a homogenous group (2008: 329). Their own empirical study, on the contrary, finds different involvement in farming by different cohorts of women. They conclude that the feminization of agriculture is occurring among middle-aged women (those born between 1955 and 1974), but not among either the younger cohort (those born between 1975 and 1984) or the older cohort (those born in and before 1954). Unfortunately they do not offer reasons for the differences in farming participation.

2.2 From the ‘Feminization of Agriculture’ to the ‘Ageing of Farming Populations’

My findings in Lianhe Village echo the views of de Brauw and his collaborators that rural women are not a homogeneous group. Based on the previous analysis of the different patterns of gender and intergenerational division of labour within the families of the women from ‘post-revolutionary baby boomers’ generation’ and ‘family planning generation’, I suggest that the agriculture of Lianhe has experienced a transition from the ‘feminization of agriculture’ to the ‘aging of farming population’. This conclusion is based on the qualitative description of the division of labour among different generations. And some of the quantitative figures we obtained in Lianhe during the same period also support this conclusion. The following two tables are the data about villagers of Lianhe engaged in non-agricultural industries in 1995 and 2005 respectively, collected by the villagers’ committee according to the request of the county government.

In Tables 7.1 and 7.2, ‘skilled manual labour’ means jobs such as masonry, carpentry, indoor decoration, hairdressing, tailoring, auto mechanics, etc. ‘Unskilled seasonal casual jobs’ include work on construction sites or in the abovementioned factories in Hanshui. Villagers working in these two categories can also do farming when needed. ‘Working as full time workers in Hanshui’ means that villagers do not stop non-farming jobs for farming. By comparing the two tables, one can find the change of villagers’ employment in Lianhe Village from the mid-1990s to the early twenty-first century.

Table 7.1 Percentage of labourers working in non-farming occupations in Lianhe, 1995
Full size table
Table 7.2 Percentage of labourers working in non-farming occupations in Lianhe, 2005
Full size table

In Lianhe in 1995, while 69.3% of male villagers in the 16–35 age group did skilled manual labour in Hanshui, only 7.3% of those in the 36–55 age group engaged in this. 83.2% of the latter group were doing unskilled casual jobs. Similar differences also exist among female villagers from these age groups. Much higher percentages of the women aged 16–35 were doing non-farming occupations than those aged 36–55. Gendered disparity within each age group is far more noticeable. For example, only 5.1% of women, compared to 15.0% of men, from the 16–35 age group worked in faraway cities; and 8.3% of women from the same group did skilled manual labour in Hanshui, a figure strikingly less than that of the men: 69.3%. A similar gendered contrast can also be seen between men and women in the 36–55 age group. Men were generally involved in more diverse labour activities than women. By inference, we can conclude that the percentages of women labourers who were left completely on the farms are 85.6% (age group 16–35), 99.2% (36–55) and 100% (over 55); compared to those of the male labourers: 7.3% (16–35), 7.4% (36–55) and 52.8% (over 55). Those men who migrated and worked outside of Hanshui had almost no part in farming; those who did skilled manual jobs or unskilled seasonal casual jobs in Hanshui were involved partly in farming since their non-farming occupations allowed them to commute between home and work sites. Unfortunately, the time spent farming by each group is not clear. Despite this, we can still observe the trend towards the feminization of farming in Lianhe in 1995.

An obvious change since the late 1990s is that dramatically increasing proportions of villagers, especially those aged 16–35, moved to faraway cities to work. Within the age group 16–35, both men and women decreased their involvement in farming, the latter dramatically so. Only 0.8% of men aged 16–35 were completely left behind to farm in 2005, compared to 7.3% in 1995, while 0.7% of women from this age group worked only on the farms in 2005, whereas 85.6% had in 1995. The decline of young women’s roles in farming is especially striking. In 2005, more men aged over 55 were left behind to farm (81.7% compared to 52.8% in 1995), but in both 1995 and 2005, all women over 55 were left on the farms. Within the 36–55 age group, a slightly smaller proportion of women were left completely on the farms in 2005 (95.2%) than in 1995 (99.2%), while the percentage of men in this group did not change significantly.

Based on these comparisons, a noticeable change in farming arrangements from 1995 to 2005 is the ageing of the farming population. More and more aged people, both men and women, are left on the farms and are engaging only in farming. Meanwhile a growing number of young villagers, including both men and women, leave farms and engage in non-farming jobs. The conclusion about the ageing of the farming population since the late 1990s can be reconciled with the one drawn by de Brauw (2003), that the proportion of farm-work done by women declined over the late 1990s, and that the future feminization of agriculture in China is unlikely. This trend of ‘aging agricultural population’ has worried many old peasants from the west and inland parts of China. For example, some old peasants from Sichuan, Hubei, and Anhui Provinces are concerned about this and they bemoan the fact that ‘None of the young folks wants to do farming. Ten years later, we old folks will be too old to do it, then no one will be able to grow crops!’ (Yang et al. 2006).

3 Rake and Basket? Cash Income Disparity Between Husband and Wife

Different patterns of household division of labour produce cash income disparity between husband and wife, which is the focus of this section. It starts with the related existing literature, and proceeds to parallel husband-wife cash income disparity for the three groups of women. Some feminist scholars feared that the dismantling of the collective would put rural women who went back to household farming under patriarchal authority once again, therefore would reinforce patriarchal controls over marriage practices, decisions about fertility etc. (Andors 1983; Croll 1983; Davin 1988). But many suggested that the reality is not as bad as expected. Based on observations in three villages in Shandong Province in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Judd, for example, suggests that the importance of the family/household as a locus of women’s oppression has been overemphasize. Judd points to new forms of labour, such as household sidelines, where women often manage the business and enjoy greater autonomy, while those who mainly work in township-village entrepreneurs are under the control of the township or village level government which are normally managed by men. Therefore, she concludes that rural women can enjoy greater power within the household than before, while the main oppression is from the outside world where men are dominant (Judd 1994).

Basically I agree with Judd, but I suggest that further exploration is needed. Firstly, in terms of research site, she chose Shandong, a province in eastern China where there is a high level of industrialisation, thus sidelines and township-village entrepreneurs are more popular there than in inland and western areas. This probably makes the power relations women are involved there different from those from the inland/western areas. Furthermore, Judd has not talked much about the gender and power relations in households. Besides, her claim is based on a demographic situation insofar as the married post-revolutionary baby boomers constituted the core of her research. I suggest that as the ‘family planning generation’ grew up the power scenario changed. And finally, as I have been emphasizing from Chap. 5, disparities exist even among the post-revolutionary baby boomers’ generation itself. In this section, we will see how household division of labour affects the income of husband and wife respectively.

In Lianhe Village, the traditional husband-wife division of labour in income generating was compared to the relation between ‘rake and basket’. The husband is the ‘rake’ which ‘grasps’ money from outside and the wife is a ‘basket’, responsible for making good use of every penny and avoiding any overspending. People believe a good cooperation between husband and wife will make a happy family. But this sort of division of labour has been broken up since the socialist revolution: the wife has become part of the ‘rake’ to bring in money. The problem, however, is who brings in more.

During the reform era, among the three groups of women mentioned above, generally speaking, for the older sister group, there is no big gap between what they earned and what their husband earned. They both take part in the farming, and make a similar contribution to the economy of the family. Although some of the husbands get extra money through casual manual work, it does not make a big difference. Moreover, when they are absent, their wives will take on most of the farming—on top of the housework and childcare—in any case.

Women from the ‘younger sisters’ group, however, generally make less of a contribution to the family’s cash income compared to their husband. As mentioned above, despite their endeavour, most women from this group end up staying at home, farming and looking after family, while their husbands are doing non-agricultural occupations outside. As we have seen, farming is not as profitable as non-farming occupations and therefore their husbands normally bring in more cash than the women. In short, husbands make a bigger contribution to the family’s economy. This may be the case when a husband focuses on farming and the care of family while the wife does non-farming work; however, this is very rare. Some women, whose husband can get a decent income, for example, by leading an indoor painting and decoration team, only do a little farming from which they can just get enough to eat, or they do not farm at all. These women are greatly admired by their counterparts in the village, since, according to the latter, they ‘do not have to work hard. All they need to do each day is just to look after the family, and then go and play mahjong!’ In other words, in this type of family, the husband works as a breadwinner while the wife is a manager and carer. The division of labour between them is more like the traditional ‘rake and basket’ pattern.

Compared to their husband, most of the women from the third generation, however, are making a proportionally bigger contribution to their family’s economy than the ‘younger sisters’ group. Moreover, their non-agricultural occupations enable them to earn a higher income than the ‘older sisters’ group. Because of breast-feeding, they will possibly leave non-agricultural occupations for a while, but they will resume when the children are old enough to live on powered milk. Due to the existence of the cooperative family, they enjoy much more flexibility and their cases are also diverse. Normally their husbands work as skilled manual labourers or in some business and usually bring in more cash than them. But sometimes because of their nimble fingers, the wives can potentially earn more. This generation is actually also admired by the women from the other two groups, since they can get away from the tiresome childcare and chores and focus on income-generating occupations.

4 Conclusion

To conclude, the holistic perspective offers a good opportunity to perceive the different but linked patterns of labour of the three groups of women in the reform era. The schooling and vocational education in their girlhood, and the family composition after marriage, have shaped the different labour lives of them in the reform era, which further causes husband-wife income disparity. Basically, limited education has tied most of the women from the ‘older sisters’ group into farming, while the ‘younger sisters’ group have been held back, despite having sufficient education and non-farming experiences before getting married, by the prevalence of the nuclear family. The latter has tied these women to the home where they farm and look after family, allowing their husband to pursue non-agricultural occupations. This arrangement has contributed to the ‘feminisation of agriculture’ for this group of women. Most women from the third generation, however, are freed from farming, childcare and domestic chores due to the emergence of the cooperative family, and can focus on non-agricultural occupations. However, this has caused concerns about the ‘ageing of farming population’ and a new grandparent-raised generation in rural China. The three groups also contribute differently to their family’s cash income when compared to their husbands’ contributions respectively. Generally speaking, the women from the ‘older sisters’ group can earn almost the same as their husbands, although neither can make much; while the ‘younger sisters’ group bring in much less cash than their husbands. As for the third generation, maybe they bring in less cash than their husbands but proportionally speaking, their contribution is bigger than the women from ‘the younger sisters’ group. And, as we noted, in terms of sheer amount, they out earn the women from the ‘older sisters’ group.