BR - Employment of women

Contemporary China Center, Australian National University Review: [untitled] Author(s): Laurel Bossen Source: The China Journal, No. 59 (Jan., 2008), pp. 168-170 Published by: Contemporary China Center, Australian National University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20066399 . Accessed: 13/07/2011 05:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ccc. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Contemporary China Center, Australian National University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Journal. http://www.jstor.org 168 THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 59 values other than economic advantage, and affective ties. As a result, all behaviors and practices, institutions, social norms and cultural rituals take on a functionalist bias and exist a priori with the explicit utilitarian mission to preserve social order and harmony or to become elements to be manipulated to maximize resource capture. Overall, this book provides researchers interested in the micro-effects of rural transformation with many interesting insights. These questions will in turn generate further theoretical and empirical investigations and again raise an intriguing question: which is the principle catalyst for transformation?market forces or market behavior?and which comes first? Mari Fitzpatrick Australian National University Employment of Women in Chinese Cultures: Half the Sky, edited by Cherlyn Skromme Granrose. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2005. xii + 205 pp. ?49.95/US$76.50 (hardcover). This volume compares women's careers and employment in four different national systems with a shared background of Chinese culture: the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. While these systems are all presumed to share a Chinese cultural heritage, an initial question might be whether they share the same Chinese cultural heritage. However, the issue of diversity within Chinese culture is not the focus here. The book asks how different national policies affect the "careers of women with a common Chinese ethnic culture" (p. 26) and whether these policies make a significant difference in promoting gender equality. Originally conceived as a symposium proposal for the Academy of Management, this project aimed to bring together scholars from each "system" to discuss their own national perspectives on women's careers. The contributors are mainly specialists in organizational behavior and management, with training or experience in the systems they describe. In the introduction, Cherlyn Skromme Granrose notes that this volume deals only with paid work in the formal economy. Part I presents contemporary Western and ancient Chinese theories about gender. In Chapter 1, Granrose, Irene Hau-Siu Chow and Irene K. H. Chew discuss broader definitions of career and occupation encompassing nonpaid work, or work outside organizations. They next review four theoretical perspectives to explain gender differences in employment: gender role socialization, human capital, dual labor markets, and gender discrimination. They also consider the role of national governments in promoting female access to education and employment, and creating family oriented policies that influence women's work. REVIEWS 169 This is a commendable approach, but is weakened by a lack of recognition of the variability within Chinese cultures and societies, as well as historical and regional factors that influence gender traditions and employment patterns. Such factors might include economic environment and specialization, regional gender divisions of labor, markets, demographic patterns, family and kinship patterns, and other cultural and historical influences from Communism to consumerism. In Chapter 2, Granrose asserts that the Chinese "feudalistic, patriarchal tradition" is a shared heritage influenced by four different religio-philosophical traditions: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Legalism. She summarizes the effects of these traditions on government and on images of women, finding that they offer little support to women seeking better employment opportunities. This treatment of Chinese culture ignores the multiple forces that constitute, shape and perpetuate Chinese patriarchal institutions, and the complex cultural and historical heritage regarding government and women. Part II, "Government policies and employment of Chinese women", presents five case studies. The chapters draw mainly on government statistics on education and employment, and discuss examples of government legislation, policies and programs that affect women's opportunities. A greater emphasis on the actual implementation of policies, not just their adoption, would be useful. It is otherwise hard to determine whether differences in female education, employment and wages are due to policies promoting gender equality or to evolving market conditions and other factors. The chapter on the People's Republic of China briefly sketches the economic reforms, with little attention to the state's explicit emphasis on gender equality during the socialist period. It focuses on the urban industrial and state-sector female employees in the late 1990s. The improvements in women's education and employment are countered by concerns with higher female unemployment as state-owned enterprises shed surplus workers. Extracts of the 1992 "Women's Law", the 1994 Labor Law, the 1995-2000 Program for the Development of Chinese Women and a report of one woman's struggle against sexual harassment at work are presented in the appendices. Surprisingly, Marxist or Maoist ideologies regarding women's employment are not discussed. The chapter on Taiwan discusses Taiwanese values, women's education, and recent government legislation regarding gender equality in employment. Tables show that female education levels were near equality from primary to university levels in 2001, but gender disparities persist in educational specialization and in employment categories. Labor force participation rates have risen for women and fallen for men, while women's unemployment rate is lower than men's. The authors discuss persistent wage differentials, work-family conflicts and new equal employment legislation in 1994, and Taiwan's special characteristics in terms of value changes regarding individualism. The chapter on Hong Kong finds a relatively high degree of gender equality in employment, with a high rate of women's participation in the work force (49 per cent of all women) and female wages at 73 per cent of male wages even 170 THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 59 though government has done little to encourage either female labor force participation or equal wages. The open-market economy established under British rule created significant demand for female employees in the course of capitalist development. Access to childcare is often a problem, with few government subsidized nurseries, and reliance by middle-class women on foreign paid domestic helpers. The study of Singapore reports that the state has played a paternalistic role but has also built an "unbiased, gender-blind, merit-based education system" (p. 130). More women than men obtain higher education in university and technical schools, but gender differences in specialization persist, with more women in arts and pharmacy, and more men in engineering and computing. Tables on female and male employment by industry and occupation over time would be more useful if percentages of women in each occupation were calculated. While government was once concerned with reducing fertility, women now have so few children that the state has adopted a pronatalist approach, offering baby bonuses and childcare benefits. Women still face challenges in combining employment and family roles and, as in Hong Kong, many hire foreign maids for childcare. The final case study focuses on Hebei Province in the PRC. Addressing women's development in terms of the UN International Women's Assembly goals, it presents various provincial measures regarding women's education, employment rights and protective legislation, and gives some sense of the way the provincial government deals with women. Eleven target areas for women's development were identified (p. 163), followed by systematic progress reports. While there is no explanation of why only the first five and then the tenth targets are evaluated, the discussion is nonetheless interesting, filled with quantitative data. This book may be useful to nonspecialists, but is less interesting for most China scholars. Certainly, government policies and interventions can influence women's education and career opportunities, and the value of this book is that it probes this relationship. Though quite uneven in their coverage, approach and presentation of data, each of the five case studies has merit in presenting basic information about women's employment, gender inequalities and government policies in the systems they cover. The inconsistencies in methods and presentation of data, however, reduce the reliability and usefulness of comparisons and recommendations in the final chapter. The editing process should have ensured that the data were presented in a consistent and readily comparable format. The generally poor editing, with numerous errors in text and tables, as well as a lack of explanation of key concepts and table headings, is a definite drawback. Laurel Bossen McGill University Article Contents p. 168 p. 169 p. 170 Issue Table of Contents The China Journal, No. 59 (Jan., 2008), pp. 1-238 Front Matter From Local Experiments to National Policy: The Origins of China's Distinctive Policy Process [pp. 1-30] Representing Corporate Culture in China: Official, Academic and Corporate Perspectives [pp. 33-61] Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the "Wenzhou Model" of Christian Revival [pp. 63-87] Social Conflicts and Modes of Action in China [pp. 89-109] Weiquan (Rights Protection) Lawyering in an Authoritarian State: Building a Culture of Public-Interest Lawyering [pp. 111-127] Review Essay Journalists' Reflections on China's Future [pp. 129-134] Reviews Review: untitled [pp. 137-138] Review: untitled [pp. 139-141] Review: untitled [pp. 141-142] Review: untitled [pp. 142-144] Review: untitled [pp. 144-145] Review: untitled [pp. 146-147] Review: untitled [pp. 147-149] Review: untitled [pp. 149-151] Review: untitled [pp. 151-153] Review: untitled [pp. 153-156] Review: untitled [pp. 156-159] Review: untitled [pp. 159-161] Review: untitled [pp. 161-164] Review: untitled [pp. 164-166] Review: untitled [pp. 166-168] Review: untitled [pp. 168-170] Review: untitled [pp. 171-172] Review: untitled [pp. 172-174] Review: untitled [pp. 175-177] Review: untitled [pp. 177-178] Review: untitled [pp. 178-180] Review: untitled [pp. 181-183] Review: untitled [pp. 183-184] Review: untitled [pp. 185-187] Review: untitled [pp. 187-189] Review: untitled [pp. 189-191] Review: untitled [pp. 191-192] Review: untitled [pp. 193-194] Review: untitled [pp. 194-196] Review: untitled [pp. 197-198] Review: untitled [pp. 198-200] Review: untitled [pp. 200-202] Review: untitled [pp. 203-204] Review: untitled [pp. 204-206] Review: untitled [pp. 206-208] Review: untitled [pp. 208-210] Review: untitled [pp. 211-212] Review: untitled [pp. 212-215] Review: untitled [pp. 215-216] Review: untitled [pp. 216-218] Review: untitled [pp. 219-220] Review: untitled [pp. 220-221] Review: untitled [pp. 221-224] Review: untitled [pp. 224-226] Review: untitled [pp. 226-228] Review: untitled [pp. 229-231] Review: untitled [pp. 231-233] Review: untitled [pp. 233-235] Review: untitled [pp. 235-236] Review: untitled [pp. 236-238] Back Matter