African Gender Relations in the New Era of Chinese Development

• In Event: 4142 - Methodological and Empirical Advances in Global and Transnational Sociology

Abstract

The rise of China as a new force in African development is one of the most significant political shifts in sub-Saharan Africa in the postcolonial era. What is largely missing from China-Africa scholarship, however, is attention to how the Chinese role in Africa is both embedded in and altering existing social inequalities. Of particular importance is the need to understand how Chinese foreign aid and transnational capital are affecting gender relations. This article examines these issues in a rural African setting that is in the midst of a transformation into a China-funded industrial park. It reveals how Chinese development is intertwined with, and in several respects exacerbates, existing gender inequalities in this locale. More conceptually, these dynamics demonstrate that this new form of development practice, what I call developmental pragmatism, produces particular forms of gendered precarity for both African women and men. These forms of gendered precarity both overlap with and depart from those created by more conventional Western development programs. This raises important questions about the shifting entanglements of gender, development, and transnational neoliberal capitalism in the twenty-first century.

Author

• Robert Wyrod, University of Colorado Boulder