Divided and Marginalized: Female Industrial Labor and the Rise of Public Patriarchy in Socialist China (1949-76)

• In Event: 477 - Section on Sociology of Development Paper Session. Gender and Development

Abstract

Developmental projects neglecting gendered norms and divisions of labor, whether led by the state or other institutions, would lead to failing outcomes or higher degree of inequalities among social members. But why some state-led gender programs that feature radical gender egalitarian ideologies and progressive institutional set up still fail? In this paper, I use the case of textile industry in socialist China (1949-1976) to examine why gender inequalities persisted against radical gender ideologies and practics. I argue that the gender programs in this period significantly undermined the family patriarchal order through embedding labor’s reproduction into the production sphere; however, the same process had paradoxically given rise to a socialist public patriarchy in the industrial realm under state socialism. I show that this public patriarchy was consolidated through two mechanisms: dividing and marginalizing. First, women workers within the same workplace were broadly divided into two sub-strata: the formal and informal workers, which prevented them from forming solidarity. Second, women’s representational structure went missing within the industrial workplace in general. This had marginalized the female workers’ power even though they were the majority in the textile industry. This study demonstrates that parallel to the evolution of patriarchy in industrial capitalism, which has transformed from one that was mostly intensified in the family to that more imperative in the public, patriarchy in industrializing China had also transformed towards a more public oriented mode and patriarchal domination strategies like dividing and marginalizing could work across social systems.

Author

• Yige Dong, Johns Hopkins University