UN Report: Gender Equality in China's Economic Transformation
October 2014
China experienced the transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, from an agricultural society to an industrial society. China’s economic reform process led to rapid and continuous economic growth. Personal income and living standards were raised, bringing women unprecedented development opportunities. However, at the same time that a market economy has brought reform and economic growth, it also exacerbated social polarization and the gap between rich and poor. Women are placed in a disadvantaged position in the market economy because of traditional social division of labor and their dual burden of work and family.
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Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government regarded the increase of women’s labor force participation as an important measure of gender equality and the improvement of women’s status. As a result, the Chinese women’s labor force participation rate was higher than that of most other countries at the time (United Nations, 2000). Yet, since the market-oriented economic reform, Chinese women’s labor force participation rate has declined.
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Many factors contribute to the decline of the female labor force participation rate in China. First, it is influenced by state policies and social environment. Second, it is influenced by the income gap between husband and wife. Third, housework and family care also contribute to decline of women’s labor force participation. Fourth, the women’s labor force participation rate is largely influenced by women’s educational attainment.
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After the founding of the PRC, families in China have evolved from the kinship tie centered, a patriarchal and male dominated pattern in an agriculture society, to the modern nuclear family pattern where the husband and the wife share equal rights inside the family (Ding, 2001). Gender equality advocated by the government has promoted equal participation of urban women in social production and activities, to a large extent. Although traditional gender stereotypes still applied, the social welfare policies and public services provided by the government through the work units largely offset the dual burden of work and family bore by Chinese urban women (Liu et al., 2008).
We see something similar occurring in India also:
IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science: Globalization and Gender Inequality- An Agricultural Perspective
Volume 19, Issue 3, Ver. VII (Mar. 2014), PP 08-13
...according to Ramgopal Singh, ''Globalization has made the thinking of women broader and modern'' The speed dynamism of women have increased which involves political participation of women. Women are now interested in power and wealth. Globalization has given market to the produce of unorganized women labours. It has also increased opportunities to them. It means women are now empowered in the villages and they are now not dependent on men such psychological thinking is observed. Alwins has studied the gender inequality in USA. He says that women need to be given knowledge of modern technology in order to improve agriculture. But, in the process of globalization women are dropped from the training of modern technology and men are getting at the centre. Consequently, women spend most of their time in taking care of family (Leeder 2004:131). Such condition is observed in both developed and developing countries. Rural farmers and agricultural women labourers are some extent getting released from family, economic, social and cultural restrictions and become the source of economic earning in rural families. However, this economic earning is spent not by them but by the others. Therefore, Mohammad Yunus established Self Help Group at Chittagong in 1983 in Bangladesh. Self Help Groups were started in India in 1991. There were more than 250 self help groups in India. The movement has accelerated since 1998 which has freed people from the clutches of private moneylenders. Now days Banks and co-operative bodies are providing assistance to SHG. It is because if women are empowered, then they can get respect in society. Besides, it is backward to keep women undeveloped in the process of globalization. Hence, women self help groups are working collectively.
And the automation of all things agricultural, and thus apparently patriarchal (from a basic socio-economical perspective), continues onwards:
Meet your new cobot: is a machine coming for your job?
The Guardian, 25 November 2017
In partnership with a British firm called Oxbotica, Ocado has trialled driverless delivery vans, which earlier this year did two-mile loops around Greenwich in south London. Together with the Disney corporation, the company is involved in robotics work aimed at approximating the dexterity of the human hand – trying to crack the same problem Amazon has: how to automate the job of picking, particularly fruit and vegetables, without causing damage. Its robotics teams have worked on a suction-based picking robot that can move tins, boxes and other products that have a uniform shape. “It uses a camera to look into the bin and figure out what and where to pick, and then where to place it,” Voica says. “It can do part of our range, and it’s ready to be deployed.”
So what does this mean for traditional patriarchal outlooks within societies across the globe as these long-standing socio-economic realities are shattered by the evolution of increasingly elegant automated solutions?
In particular, it seems that religions, for example, that emphasise patriarchal authority, will be undermined by such advancements - and that in itself will be a huge global revolution, it seems. Of course, the patriarchal beneficiaries will likely try to hold on to their power for as long as possible, but at some point the raw economic truth of the matter will speak for itself.
What do you think?
