"Marketization And Income Gender Inequality" In The Perspective Of Social Capital

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China "gender equality" hasbecome a representative thought in Chinese society. With the deep develepment ofChinese marketization， there is gender stratification on the field of incomedistribution. Therefore，it has become an issue concerned at home and abroad thathow to interpret income gender inequality in socialist China who advocatesegalitarianism in the process of marketization. Scholars have done many researchesfor this. And the focus of debate is whether marketization increases the effect ofgender inequality in income gender inequality. This is significant to the assessmentof the market economic system protection of fair distribution of resources by gender.In addition to the differences among statistical methods and data, we found the rootof the debate is the different measurement of viraibale "market" and "genderinequality". We did not hear the voice of social capital in this exciting debate.However, the relevant literature suggests that social capital is closely related with theconcepts in the debate. That means social capital should be put in this study as aimportant variable. Faced with the growing influnce of social capital in Chinesemarketization, this is no doubt that we will brave the risk of missing the truth if weexcluse this concept from the paradigm of the major issues.This thesis proved the the importance of social capital in the issue ofmarketization and income gender inequality issues both from the theoreticalderivation and the empirical test.1）Social capital theory did not receive dueattention to its ability of explaining social facts (especially the major issues) becauseof multiple fuzzy definition of its concept and vague theoretical meaning. Aftercombing the literature, we believe that social capital theory can be integrated on thebasis of its close link to "resources" concept, and thus connected with other researchfield which can share the same concept making the theory of social capital has amore extended vitality. On this basis, we extracted valuable information from theliterature of social capital and income, social capital and gender, social capital andmarketization as the raw material for our empirical study which will answer theproblem in the perspective of social capital.Our empirical study answered three questions:1) whether marketization increasedthe income gender inequality?2) Whether marketization increased the effect ofgender inequality in the income gender inequality?3) What’s the role of socialcapital in it? By statistical analysis of the2009social network in major cities and jobsurvey (JSNET2009), we found that marketization indeed increase the incomegender inequality. Gender inequality is the main reason, but not serious. Therefore,we infer that increased income gap between man and woman may stimulate the psychology of the Chinese people who always attached importance to "genderequality".They believe women are deprived by marketization. This thought mayhave slight exaggerated the true increase of gender inequality. Secondly, socialcapital has been proved to be an important variable in the topic of marketization andincome gender inequality:1) social capital is indeed related to income and has theactual explanatory power of income gender inequality;2) There is a directcorrespondence between social capital and gender inequality which can connectsocial capital, gender inequality and marketization together;3) The study also testedthe relationship between social capital and marketization, and the results show thatmarketization improved the recognition of social capital but reduced the value of it.This thesis provided a new empirical test for the debates of marketization andincome gender inequality through the introduction of a new variable of social capital.It also provied the confidence to people who suspect the the clear explain ability ofsocial capital theory in the various levels of social facts (especially the major issues).