Market Of Chinese Rural Households Gender Relations

This dissertation joins the debate over the effect of market-driven economic development on women's work opportunities and household gender inequalities. It assesses women's opportunities for off-farm employment in different regions with different marketization, the relative contribution of female off-farm workers to household income, and the gender relation in families whose female members (daughters or wives) have left for off-farm jobs. On the basis of the Structuration theory of Anthony Giddens and the patriarchy theory of Sylvia Walby, the author establishes the patriarchy conceptual framework to analyze gender relation in rural families. We find that women are not uniformly excluded from opportunities for off-farm employment. Employers in export areas, such as Zhujiang Delta, prefer to hire young, unmarried women as a very cheap source of labor. In this situation, rural females' opportunities for off-farm jobs improve significantly. Rural women are even more likely than men to obtain off-farm employment in this industry. This is very true for the Zhu village in Sichuan province. The relative size contribution of household income for female with off-farm jobs increases, which also results many unexpected outcomes. The most important is that it influences the production and reproduction of patriarchy in private area, which decreases gender inequalities within rural households.