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Keywords
Chinese women; migration; gender; reform period; dagongmei; hukou
Abstract
This study examines the extent to which women workers have been excluded from the major social institutions and what it means for them to live with an increasing double burden that is placed upon the dagongmei, that is migrant women `maiden workers.' The dagongmei as a category emerged following the structural changes imposed by reform policies and by the accompanying modifications in discourse and perception. They embody multiple divisions and tensions in Chinese society relating to gender, class, urban/rural, safe/insecure, development/underdevelopment and modern/backward divisions.
They also epitomise a new labour control regime, combining the well-known gendered regime of production and exclusion via the state-led women's liberation of the period prior to the Reform. By describing the impact of the Reform and one of its key side-effects, migration, on women in general and working women in particular, this study seeks to explain and understand gender politics surrounding the dagongmei.
Introduction
This study aims to provide critical understanding about women workers in the informal sector in contemporary China, also called dagongmei or `maiden workers.' Unique in China's rapidly changing reality, these women's situation is commonly perceived as an outcome of the Reform1 process. This is closely related to the changes occurring in employment and labor and gender relations. In this context, a review of recent studies on women and women workers in China will provide the general background for questions asked here. It is my contention that the internal dynamics relating to women in China will be better revealed through studies of identity politics such as the social construction of dagongmei, formed through the othering and labeling game that encompasses most tensions between what was and what will occur in a nation that is building itself.
This study examines the extent to which women workers have been excluded from the major social institutions and what it means for them to live with the double burden of work and family, through the special lens of a new social body called dagongmei. This social body is presumably emerging as a result of the structural changes imposed by the reform policy and the changes in discourse and perception accompanying it. It seems to embody multiple divisions in Chinese society,...