Rebirth: the identity of Chinese female university students of rural origins.

• In Event: Roundtable Session 8
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Disruption and Contestation in Higher Education: Language, Politics, and Activism

Proposal

This study explores the identity of rural female students in China's elite higher education through a gendered lens, utilizing ethnography focused on online narratives from the Douban group ‘University Students from Rural Areas.’ It reveals the complex experiences of this group under the cultural dislocation between urban and rural settings, highlighting their feelings of powerlessness, inferiority, and sensitivity when confronted with implicit gender stereotypes and economic pressures at home and in the urban elite cultural milieu. The identity of rural female university students involves challenging traditional gendered expectations, while also dealing with financial constraints from their families and cultural capital disparities with their urban peers. Higher education offers opportunities for social mobility but inadvertently exacerbates the class differences between them and urban students, with notable issues such as economic burdens, lack of academic support, and marginalization within gender structures. This research provides a new sociological perspective on the identity formation of rural female university students, underscoring the profound impact of the interplay between gender and class on self-identity. It also calls for more inclusive educational policies to support marginalized student groups, emphasizing the urgency of educational equity and the transformation of societal gender norms.

Author

• FU QIYA, Institute of Education, Xiamen University