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RURAL CHINA.
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Impact of economic development on rural women.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Impact of economic development on rural women. 500 million rural females. Direct and indirect impact of China's industrialization. Immigration of rural Chinese to urban areas. New factories in rural districts as an employment alternative to agricultural labor and household work for women. Higher wages for male workers. History of Chinese women.
Paper Introduction:
Economic Development and Rural Women in China
China, along with India, are the two largest countries that are now undergoing economic "takeoff" from developing to newly-industrialized country (NIC) status. Since these two countries alone account for somewhat more than a third of the world's six billion people, their economic transformation arguably affects more human beings than any other event in history. In each of these countries, at least 100 million people have joined what may broadly be called the world middle class. Hundreds of millions of others are knocking on the door.
In both of these countries, however, the modern urban sectors are still relatively dwarfed by their rural sectors, which in China alone numbers about a billion people. Not yet modernized, these people are nevertheless touched by and undergoing
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This critique should not be taken as a means to dismiss the enormousprogress that China has already made. To understand the impact of industrialization and economic on ruralwomen in China, it is necessary first to consider briefly thecharacteristics of traditional Chinese rural life as these affect women,and then process and effects of industrialization. To take only one dimension of this internal migration, somethree million young, unmarried rural women have gone to the cities to takejobs there as household workers.[1] At the same time, factories have sprung up in many ruraldistricts.[2] These factories have broadly the same fundamental economicimpact on the countryside as does economic growth in the urban areas. They live far better, in a country where outright famine was onceendemic. In recent years, numerous factories owned by "Overseas" ethnicChinese have been established in or near cities, particularly in thesouthern coastal provinces. A rather similar, likewise culturally-driven dynamic appears tooperate on rural women who migrate into the cities to join the urban workforce. 377. [5]Jan Knippers Black, Development in Theory and Practice: Paradigmsand Paradoxes. In each of these countries, at least 1 million people havejoined what may broadly be called the world middle class. Nevertheless, a great deal of progress has yet to be made. 149. In both of these countries, however, the modern urban sectors arestill relatively dwarfed by their rural sectors, which in China alonenumbers about a billion people. 13. Many find husbands as wellas employment, but they have significantly lower fertility than theirsisters who remain in the countryside.[14] This may partly reflect stronger enforcement of one-child laws in thecities, but it also seems to reflect a reduced propensity to have children. 149. The Chinese Revolution upended the previous system of landlorddomination, but in spite of much political effort it did not transform theChinese peasant household. 99. As was notedearlier, these women total some three million. Dempsey, Working Sisters From Outside: RuralChinese Household Workers in Beijing. Hundreds ofmillions of others are knocking on the door. They are a significant group. Working Sisters From Outside: RuralChinese Household Workers in Beijing. The rural woman who remains in the countryside and finds work asa local factory worker gains less, and contributes less, than if her workwere paid equally to that of her male coworkers. Rural Chinese women enjoy better living conditionsand much greater opportunities than they did in even the recent past, buttheir options are still constrained by a number of factors. However,industrialization has also had an extensive impact on rural China, wheremost of China's population still lives. 1 14. The rapid industrialization and economic growth of China isassociated primarily with its urban areas, and particularly with thesouthern coastal provinces and cities such as Shanghai. The conditions of rural women have also been influenced by thestructure of development, both in the countryside and in the cities. Management of Migrant Labor in Overseas Chinese Enterprisesin South China. Economic development has had a substantial impact, butnot yet a fully transformative impact on the conditions of life in theChinese countryside. Nevertheless it is fair to say that daughters were and are lessprized than sons; hence most women, particularly young women, than mostmen, including younger men. Rural factories most obviously offer an employment alternative toagricultural labor. [9]Ibid., p. Wages for male workers in rural factoriestend to be higher than for female workers.[3] The possible causes of thisdisparity will be examined below. This may in turn indicate either that the young women who choose tomigrate are less disposed to have children, or that they are influenced bythe wider range of alternative options in the urban environment.Ultimately it reinforces a point made by Jan Knippers Black, that economicdevelopment is the only reliable means to defuse the population bomb.[15] It is perhaps noteworthy that the development effect has such animpact on the choices of these young rural women, whether the choice ismade before or after migration from the countryside to the cities. 368. [1 ]Ibid., p. [6]Jean C. The wife of thehousehold patriarch was and is a matriarch; it is the household's youngerwomen -- her daughters and granddaughters, and particularly her daughters-in-law -- who are subservient to her. In Helena Z. Berkeley: University of California, 1999.----------------------- [1]Dai Kejing and Paula R. Oi, Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations ofEconomic Reform (Berkeley: University of California, 1999), p. Denise Hare, however, suggests that wage differentials may also bebased on factors originating in the household rather than in theworkplace.[9] In particular, she identifies the influence of a"reservation wage" -- that is, broadly, the wage at which a given worker(or her household) judges her wage income to be of greater value thanalternative options such as household work.[1 ] Hare argues that women'swork in the productive peasant household is generally valued less thanmen's work. In particular, factoriesdominated by local officials accommodate themselves readily to traditionalassumptions about women's pay. In general, rural Chinese women have made great progress as a resultof economic development, but much more progress must be made before theycan realize their full potential both for themselves and for China. As was noted earlier, women in rural factories tend to get lower payfor comparable work.[8] This, like other pay disparities based on gender,race, etc., for workers of comparable productivity, might well beattributed to biases on the part of managers, or possibly to managers'presumption of bias on the part of their customers. This local-dominated tendency has positive effects, in that ruralfactory development -- even if capitalized by foreign investors -- issomewhat organic to the communities in which it takes place. 12. Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations ofEconomic Reform. It is not quite true to say as a generalizationthat "women" had a subservient role in this household. However, these benefitshave been unevenly distributed. On the one hand,the overall impact is clearly beneficial, offering wider opportunities thanwere ever available to rural Chinese women before, and at better wages. Wewill also see below how the household culture has influenced wagedisparities in China's rural factories. [3]Ibid. 1 11. Since these two countries alone account for somewhatmore than a third of the world's six billion people, their economictransformation arguably affects more human beings than any other event inhistory. This impact has been both indirectand direct. The operate with a view to pursuing profits, which can beinvested in further growth and expansion, and which provide remunerationfor themselves. Their wages, though higher than before,remain low. 2nd ed. Women's Economic Status in Rural China: HouseholdContributions to Male-Female Disparities in the Wage-Labor Market.World Development, 27 (1999), pp. Theyhave this impact, however, without the pressure to migrate with its variousdisruptive effects on individuals and families, the rural communities theyleave, and the cities to which they migrate. It alsomeans, however, that economic development may tend to reinforce rather thanchallenge established cultural practices. A similar story can be told of the influence of urban economic growthand resulting job opportunities for rural Chinese women. These factories, largely involved in theproduction of light consumer goods, employ large numbers of rural migrantworkers, particularly rural women. As with the rural factories,the human capital of the work force is not developed to its full potential,and long term growth is slower than it would otherwise be. [15]Black, p. Such is the dynamic of employment of rural Chinese women by ruralfactories. Inspite of governmental efforts to limit internal migration, millions ofrural Chinese have flocked to the cities in search of greateropportunities. One suchfactor is a constrictive household culture in which some women,"matriarchs," have high effective status, while most others are placed in asubordinate role. Women are thus brought to the factory gate by alower bidding price than are men. Lopata, ed.,Current Research on Occupations and Professions, Volume 1 .Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, pp. [8]Hare, p. [14]Kejing and Dempsey, p. The "Overseas" Chinese managers ofthese factories have tended to find these young women employees difficultto work with, complaining for example that they "had poor work habits andlacked a sense of responsibility."[12] These complaints are, to be sure, fairly common among employers oflow-skilled, low-wage labor everywhere, urban or rural, male or female.The employers, however, respond (with some exceptions) by fitting into atraditional role, employing paternalist management techniques in whichpunishments figure prominently.[13] They therefore underinvest, so tospeak, in worker training and development. In a peculiar way the process alsodiscriminates in an oblique way against men, who are drawn into the factorywork force only after the available lower-wage women have been recruited. The rural woman who moves to a city to work as a housemaidcontributes less to China's economic and social progress than she would iftrained as a driver or skilled factory worker, let alone a teacher orengineer. Therefore, even if the factory managers do not themselves have anyinternal motive to provide differential pay to men and women workers, apressure to that effect is generated by the household "push" of the lowerreservation wage. [11]Ibid. So, in consequence, is the economic pump-primingeffect of consumer spending power, which in the long term is the mostpowerful driver of economic growth. The situation of rural women in China is broadly reflective of ruralChina as a whole. Development in Theory and Practice: Paradigms andParadoxes. [13]Ibid., p. 96. The household is therefore prepared to surrender her directlabor contribution to the household itself in turn for a lower wage thanwould be required in order to surrender the labor contribution of amale.[11] #-11- Ibid. The deleterious overall effect, however, is that wage levels andconsequent spending power transmitted into the community is lower than itwould otherwise be. Theevolution of rural economic development, however, is worthy of specificattention. This classification sounds narrow until we consider thatit includes about 5 million people. 11-29.Oi, Jean C. [7]Ibid., p. Their opportunities, though widerthan before, remain limited. BibliographyBlack, Jan Knippers. Rural women, like practically allother Chinese, have vastly greater options and opportunities available tothem today than they did even two decades ago, let alone half a centuryago. Theseyoung women, seeking positions as housemaids, are after all relatively nearthe bottom of the opportunity scale. Not yet modernized, these people arenevertheless touched by and undergoing modernization. 2nd ed. Nevertheless, the opportunity even to bea housemaid, and perhaps once in the city to seek other opportunities, isone that previously did not exist. The Chinese Communist system borrowed numerous elements from itsSoviet Russian mentor and prototype, but a notable element it did notborrow was the Soviet system of highly centralized economic control.Whereas Soviet factories were under ministerial control, largely bypassinglocal and regional governmental bodies, the Chinese vested broad authorityin local government.[6] As a result, when the national governments of the post-Mao erasuccessively relaxed ideological demands upon local and regionalauthorities, and then called for active development, the local authoritiestook the lead in rural economic development, including industrialdevelopment. On the indirect side, the rapid economic growth of China's urbaneconomic zones has created a powerful draw reaching into rural China. 1 11. Thus, for example the "one child" policy ofthe Chinese government has led to widespread female infanticide.[5] Wewill consider below what the development experience of Chinese rural womenhas to teach about effective means of population growth limitation. Theoverall progress of the economic revolution in China's cities, and even ofits impact on urban Chinese women (as distinct from rural female migrantsto the cities) lies outside the scope of the current discussion. The followingdiscussion will concentrate on the impact of economic development on ruralwomen in China. 1 12. In Helena Z. Moreover, by theirpresence they tend to bid up wages in general. Boulder: Westview, 1999.Hare, Denise. Thisis reasonable, in that they retain ties to the countryside from which theycame, while the opportunity for such migration influences women still inthe countryside. Another is low educational levels, which do not preparethem well for opportunities that might otherwise be available. This has led to a pattern that Jean Oi characterizes as thelocal corporate state.[7] In effect, local officials have come to think and behave somewhat asbusinessmen. APMJ, 8 (1999), pp. Thus, both for rural China as a whole and for rural Chinese women,the overall effects of rural factories and economic development in theChinese countryside has been strongly positive. Lopata, ed., CurrentResearch on Occupations and Professions, Volume 1 (Greenwich, CN: JAIPress), p. Atthe same time, however, the range of these opportunities is narrower thanit might be -- as was noted previously, many rural women who migrate to thecities find work only as housemaids.[4] For China's rural women, thus, economic transformation in China hasbeen a blessing incompletely realized. At the same time, China as a whole has not obtained the fullbenefit of the human capital embodied in its rural women. In the strictest sense, we might regard these migrants as no longer"rural" women, but the literature continues to describe them as such. Factories generally offerhigher wages than these traditional alternatives. In pre-industrialChina, man and women both worked in the fields, while women also had abroad range of domestic responsibilities in the extended household. 361-79.Kejing, Dai; and Dempsey, Paula R. [12]Cen Huang, Management of Migrant Labor in Overseas ChineseEnterprises in South China, APMJ, 8 (1999), p. 12. The managers, embued with the same outlook as thehouseholds whose members they employ, are at the least not inclined tochallenge this practice, particularly when it brings them workers for lowerwages. [4]Kejing and Dempsey, p. A significant effect of this pattern is an element oflocal control over economic development and over what may be called theculture of economic development. Economic Development and Rural Women in China China, along with India, are the two largest countries that are nowundergoing economic "takeoff" from developing to newly-industrializedcountry (NIC) status. A different dimension of rural women migrants in the urban workenvironment is suggested by the experience of the young unmarried women whogo to the cities in search of employment as housemaids. [2]Denise Hare, Women's Economic Status in Rural China: HouseholdContributions to Male-Female Disparities in the Wage-Labor Market, WorldDevelopment, 27 (1999), p. It must also be admitted that their"choice," like that of the lower-paid female rural factory workers, may inpart reflect a household decision: a lower "reservation cost," to borrowfrom the concept of a reservation wage, for the decision to leave thehousehold and migrate to a city. Perhaps one out of 12 human beingson Earth is a rural Chinese woman or girl. 1 11-1 29.Huang, Cen. For women, whose opportunities for earning wages evenas agricultural workers tended to be limited, factory jobs also offer analternative to paid or unpaid household work. (Boulder: Westview, 1999) p. Thus, growth rates are reduced belowwhat they might otherwise be.
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