How Maternal Employment Shapes Women’s Expectations of Work and Family in Contemporary Urban China

• In Event: 1552 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 4: New Perspectives on Gender in China

Abstract

Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with young urban Chinese women, I show how maternal employment shapes young women’s expectations of work and family in a context of rapid social transformation. Under China’s state socialism, women were actively incorporated into the labor force. As such, for young Chinese women today, maternal employment is often ubiquitous. Respondents attach strong moral meanings to women’s work. Maternal employment is viewed as integral to good mothering, by providing cultural capital and modeling positive behavior. The ubiquity of maternal employment and the moralization of women’s work have led contemporary young Chinese women to view wage work as a normative expectation. Yet different from their own mothers, these women are confronted with a labor market context that has been transformed by marketization. During the socialist era, work units in urban areas played a crucial role in individuals’ domestic life, by providing public goods and services. Market reform has since weakened the role of work units. Consequently, the burden of household labor and care work has been shifted back to the family and to women. Contemporary young Chinese women view themselves as being caught between intensified competing demands of work and family.

Author

• Yun Zhou, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor