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Women, Family and the Nation in Contemporary China

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Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations

Part of the book series: Gender, Sexualities and Culture in Asia ((GSCA))

Abstract

This chapter introduces the historical context these young women find themselves.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The hukou system, commonly known as the household registration system, is an important regulatory tool of the party-state that serves multiple purposes, including control of population distribution.

  2. 2.

    A government programme of job allocation existed from the mid-1950s through to the late 1980s in China, which controlled the size, growth, and distribution of urban jobs (Bian 1997).

  3. 3.

    The danwei (work unit) functions as a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare system for mostly urban industrial state-owned enterprise employees (see Lu and Perry 1997).

  4. 4.

    For a detailed schedule of the evolution of the One-Child Policy, see Greenhalgh (2008, p. 32) and Greenhalgh and Winckler (2005).

  5. 5.

    A metaphor used to describe the guaranteed life-long employment of Chinese workers under the socialist system.

  6. 6.

    I am aware of the controversy between the terms ‘class’ and ‘social strata’. I use them interchangeably in this book as it is not the focus here to differentiate the two.

  7. 7.

    An IUD is a small T-shaped plastic and copper device that is inserted into the womb, and serves as a contraceptive method.

  8. 8.

    The All China Women’s Federation (ACWF) is the Chinese government organisation that is responsible for promoting government policies relating to women and advocating women’s rights.

  9. 9.

    Deng Xiaoping referred to the ‘four modernisations’, meaning the modernisation of agriculture, industry, science/education, and national defence, which all came under the slogan of building an ideal xiao kang (moderately well-off) society to provide for all its citizens.

  10. 10.

    A social category used to describe unmarried men, which is mainly constituted of economically marginalised men and has a historical association with anti-state behaviours.

  11. 11.

    At the time of writing up this research project in 2018, China has started plans to raise its retirement age to ease the strain placed on the current social security system resulting from its increasingly ageing population (Wong 2015). According to the government’s plans (Shebao Chaxun Wang 2017), women’s retirement age will be gradually increased to match that of the man by 2036, to retire at the age of 60.5.

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Xie, K. (2021). Women, Family and the Nation in Contemporary China. In: Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations. Gender, Sexualities and Culture in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1139-1_2

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