Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Seeking Intimacy outside of Marriage: Off-Farm Employment, Romantic Encounters, and Marital Instability in Contemporary China

Fri, March 17, 5:15 to 7:15pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Mezzanine, Peel

Abstract

This paper seeks to unpack the linkage between female employment and marital instability among rural Chinese women, by examining the ways their participation in labor migration affects their intimate lives. Serving as wage earners in big cities allows rural women to socialize with male co-workers and friends, thereby considerably expanding their interactions with the opposite sex. Stemming from such interactions are rural women’s shifting expectations for romance, life partners, and marriage. Indeed, some take the opportunity to explore alternatives to marriage, engage in extramarital intimacy, and even raise children born out of wedlock. Women’s efforts to protect those intimate relationships formed outside of marriage typically lead to marital disruption and even dissolution.
Rural men’s poor adjustment to wives’ outside employment also contributes to marital instability. As more women leave the countryside to seek employment in cities, a great many rural men face the prospect of temporarily or permanently losing their wives to other males employed in the urban labor force. Confronted with real or imagined infidelity on the part of wives, some men feel utterly at a loss and may resort to extreme measures -- including stalking and physical confrontation -- to restrict wives’ contact with other men. These measures often end up deepening marital grievances and escalating conflicts between rural men and their wives. My findings suggest that to untangle the linkage between female employment and marital instability, we must take a close-up view of women’s exploration of romantic relationships and extramarital intimacy at and through the workplace.

Author