| The literature mainly portrays the Chinese family as a kinship-based corporate economic entity characterized by a common budget, shared property, collectivism and mutual benefit. Little attention is devoted to intra-family gender dynamics. This study provides insights into the current within-family gender structure and its interplay with extra-family social, economic, cultural and political forces in post-reform rural China.;The analysis of data from Guicun substantiates propositions of the collective approach to family. It shows that gender-based inequalities exist in many aspects of family life: in property inheritance, family resource use, division of labour, family management and control of family income. Family life is characterized by both cooperation and conflict. Decision-making within the family involves negotiation and power struggles. Current gendered power relations within families are shaped by differentiated access to various economic and social resources, along with gender ideology, which defines "proper" gender roles and responsibilities, and currently disadvantages women. The evidence from Guicun shows that the critical factors weakening women's fall-back position include lack of independent access to housing, agricultural land, off-farm income-generating opportunities and social support in the case of conjugal conflict. Gender-differentiated access to resources is, in turn, influenced by a complex set of interacting social, economic, political and cultural factors: the patrilineal and patrilocal kinship system, the current legal system, land policy and gendered discourse regarding the responsibilities and roles of men and women.;This study also shows how individual women and men exercise their agency to transform old gendered norms and practices in the division of labour, family management, control of family income, marriage and remarriage to better suit their interests. It suggests the need for policy intervention in the current legal system, revision of the current household-based land allocating policy and the establishment of social institutions to protect women from domestic violence.;Keywords. intra-family gender relations, family, gender, access to resources, bargaining power, gendered division of labour, family management, marriage, divorce, remarriage, rural China.;This study draws insights from the feminist development of collective economic models of the family and from the recent integration of structure and agency in social theory, especially Sewell's conceptualization of structure and agency. The study takes a micro-sociological approach, combining ethnographic study and a sample survey to collect data in a northern Chinese village in 2003. |
