Contemporary Social Stratification Of The Chinese Women

China is now in a period of accelerated sharp transformation of society, and the transformation of political and economic systems and rebuilding of cultural values, among other things, have caused rapid change of the structure of society. As one of important indicators of social structure changes, women as a group have seen quick differentiation as society develops. It is also the unique characteristics of social transformation that have led to the inherent uniqueness of social stratification of modern Chinese women. This thesis describes the overall profile of social stratification of women in China today from the perspectives of social and sexual stratification, compares it with the general social stratification in China and the social stratification of men as a group, explores the uniqueness and structural characteristics of and reveals the trend of social stratification of today's Chinese women. In addition, the social relationship analysis model of Naila Kabeer is also adopted to provide system-level discussion and analysis of causes of the difference between women's and men's stratification.This thesis is based on the following theoretical assumptions. First, compared with men, the social structure of Chinese women shows a wider gap from the ideal one, and women are faced with severer social stratification compared with men. Second, the social situation that men are in a dominant and women in a subordinated condition has not changed, and men still remain in a dominating and women in a dominated position respectively. Third, the group of housewives is expanding continuously, which represents retrogression of society and goes against women's mobility to upper levels of society.Research results have fully demonstrated existence of the above assumptions. First, in view of women's position in social stratification, there are few women in top levels of society and many women are at the edges of various social classes. Second, compared with men, the percent of women flowing upward in society is lower but that of horizontal and downward mobility is higher, and social standing of women tends to further decline. Additionally, educational level of Chinese women is severely out of line of their employment level, although the difference between men and women in terms of entitlement to educational resources has been gradually narrowed along with the extensive promotion of compulsory primary education and the expansion and generalization of secondary and higher education since adoption of the reform and opening-up policy, wide gap still remains between men and women in terms of labor participation rate and the employment level of men and of women is not proportionate to the improvement of their educational level respectively. Furthermore, housewives as a special group of women tend to expand in China today, which takes women back to a dependent and subordinated position and goes against self-development of women.This thesis analyzes social stratification in China today in a unique and novel gender perspective, which, plus the focus on special groups of women, for instance, housewives, are the creative aspects of the thesis.General train of logic thoughts of the thesis is from overall description to layer-by-layer discussion, then to comments and summarization, and from theory to practice and then to theory again, successively discussing the general situation of social stratification of Chinese women and the current condition of typical classes of women and their differences from men in the same class respectively, and ending with system-based analysis of causes of disadvantaged position of women, and suggestions on how to change the disadvantaged position of women and drive the social structure toward a healthy status. The introduction part of the thesis describes the purpose, significance of the research as well as the theoretical framework and research methodologies adopted during the research. Chapter I mainly discusses the model and current status of social classification in China, particularly comparing women's stratification with the overall stratification of society and with stratification of women. Meanwhile, it takes international perspective into the research, which compares the social stratification situation with gender perspective in China with that of U.S. and Australia when they were undergoing the industrialization process last century. Chapter II to Chapter V provide analysis of representative social groups from four major social classes, i.e. the upper, the middle, the lower and the bottom class, which are namely public civilians, while-collars, farmer laborers, women staying in rural areas to take care of their families, and laid-out people in urban areas, aiming to uncover the condition of survival of women in each of the class, compare the difference between men and women in the same class, analyze the system-related causes of women's disadvantaged position as compared with men in the same class, and propose policies for improving the current situation. Chapter VI focuses on analysis of"housewives", a unique group of women that is often excluded from social classes in mainstream stratification research, with emphasis placed on analysis of the new trend of development of the group at the new era in addition to discussion of situation of their survival. Chapter VII sums up and analyzes social stratification of today's Chinese women, applies the social relationship analysis method of Kabeer to find out the system-related causes of the phenomenon, and finally proposes the vision and suggestion on improving women's social standing and promoting harmony of development between men and women and among various classes of women.The thesis is primarily guided by the basic views and methodologies of social stratification as contained in social sciences, and adopts methods such as combining theory with demonstration and quantitative with qualitative analysis, comparative analysis, etc.