This video is a good starting point in trying to understand rural women's issues as the migrate to the cities to find work. Because of the Hukou system, rural residents leave behind their rights as they migrate to the cities and because of this, many women are forced to accept work that is many times inhumane.
Introduction
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The economy of urban modern China is being fuelled by the work of migrant workers, most of whom are women. The ratio of men to women in export processing zones is 3:1 and about 40 percent of the floating population are women (China’s long twentieth century). These women leave home and travel to the cities in search of work to earn wages that not only help their family, but also help improve their position within the family and give them freedom from the rigid patriarchal structure of home. Though their motivation is to make a better life for themselves and their families, these women enter the city without any legal rights, are paid less than men, have fewer job opportunities than men, are many times forced to trade their youth and beauty in ventures such as prostitution, secretarial work and hostessing and are faced with the responsibility to one day return to their homes and marry a man. Without legal rights and amongst discrimination based on both class and gender, rural women who migrate to the cities are caught in between two oppressive worlds, often unsure which is the lesser evil. In this essay, I will examine the question of gender in rural migrant populations and analyze how gender prevents and helps women get work, what kind of work is available to them, the pay difference between women and men, the difference in status of jobs that are available to each gender and the problems rural women face in achieving their dreams.
Factory workers:
According to the Asia Foundation (asiafoundation.org), more than half of the migrant workers in the Guangdong provence (according to other sources, more than half of all migrant workers are women) are women. These women are forced to work 12 hours a day, six days a week for an average monthly salary between 40-65 dollars a month. Though these wages are much higher than what these women would make in their villages, they have to work in inhumane conditions without legal rights or access to social services ("Programs to support Migrant Women Workers" page 2).
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Working Rural Women and the Household
Rural Women's Rights in China
When married rural women seek employment, they are far less likely to go to the cities than their unmarried counterparts. They tend to find a job locally and stay near their families, often ending up juggling traditional household duties with the duties of their jobs. In 2007, contributors to the journal Feminist Economics found that married rural women who become wage laborers end up having less leisure time because hours spent earning wages does not decrease the amount of domestic labor women have to do. Though the wages themselves give women more bargaining power in the household, the cultural stereotypes about women and what a woman’s duty is still persists. What this translates to is though women can go out and earn wages, the work that they do is seen as less than the work that the man does and though women spend more time overall working it is seen as if they are working less than men.
image:www.globalenvision.org/topics/governance?page=2
