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Concluding Discussion: Living with Contradictions

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Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations

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

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Abstract

In pulling all of my analysis together, I aim to cast light on the gendered reality for these privileged women in the hope of illuminating the constraints that Chinese women need to cast off in seeking an egalitarian future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A good example of this usage is Hsu’s (1995) book The Rise of Modern China, which includes a detailed account of China’s difficult transformation from a traditional universal empire to a modern nation state. The book’s title in Chinese is Zhongguo de fendou (China’s fendou).

  2. 2.

    Directed by Zhao Baogang, the series realistically depicts the lives of six new graduates of the post-80s generation in Beijing and their fendou. It was well-received by the post-80s audience.

  3. 3.

    This is not to claim that Chinese workers do not resist at all, as spontaneous workers’ protests and individual suicides in Chinese iphone factories has demonstrated otherwise. See more (Smith and Pun 2006; Pun et al. 2010, p. 138; Fullerton 2018).

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  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Kailing Xie

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Correspondence to Kailing Xie .

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Xie, K. (2021). Concluding Discussion: Living with Contradictions. 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_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1139-1_7

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