Abstract
This chapter is concerned primarily with the impact of employment in the export-orientated industries of China on women workers and in particular on their access to social welfare. It discusses the way in which the economic reforms and the growth of non-state industry have affected non-wage benefits to workers. It shows that women workers in the new export-oriented industries receive high wages by the standards prevailing in the older state industries, but have little job security, work long hours in poor conditions and lack the health and welfare benefits formerly enjoyed in China’s state-owned industries. However, it would be an over-simplification to argue that involvement in the global economy has reduced security and welfare provision for the whole workforce. Access to welfare in pre-reform or ‘socialist China’ was by no means as comprehensive or as generous as is sometimes believed. Entitlement depended on residence and occupation. Urban workers benefited from the system, but peasants, the majority of the population, had little access to public provision. In difficulties caused by bereavement, disability, sickness or old age they depended on the family.
Although tending the field is very hard work, we have a lot of free time. When your work is done you can play with your village friends. Here you have to hold your urine until they give you the permit to go to the bathroom
(SEZ woman worker interviewed in Lee, 1995: 384).
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Davin, D. (2004). The Impact of Export-oriented Manufacturing on the Welfare Entitlements of Chinese Women Workers. In: Razavi, S., Pearson, R., Danloy, C. (eds) Globalization, Export-oriented Employment and Social Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524217_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524217_3
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