Confucian philosophy preached women's inferiority to men. Women were to remain ignorant and to obey--first, their fathers; after marriage, their husbands; during widowhood, their sons. Marriages were arranged, and a woman's responsibility was to remain married, no matter how undesirable the match. Divorce was not allowed or remarriage by widows. The major role of women, considered the private property of men, was to please their husbands and to bear children. With the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the family status of rural women in China changed dramatically. The Chinese Communist Party and the people's government recognized that the liberation of rural women, who constituted half the population of China, was necessary for the country to realize complete emancipation. The new government promulgated a series of laws, policies, and regulations that protected women. The Chinese Constitution of the early 1950s stated clearly that Chinese rural women enjoyed equal rights with men in political, economic, social, cultural, and family life. The state protected rural women's rights and interests, practiced equal pay for equal work, and provided equal opportunity for women's training and promotion. China's Marriage Law eliminated arranged marriages, stipulating that both women and men were free to choose their marriage partners, and widows were allowed to remarry. The Inheritance Law recognized the equal right of women to inherit family property. The Land Reform Law of the early 1950s provided rural women with an equal share of land under their own name, thereby protecting their economic independence. . With the enlightening of Feminist discourse, I analyze the sexual division of labor in the china¡¦s women ethnic group, and find china¡¦s women to be both oppressed by patriarchy and capitalism in their family lives and their working environment as the Socialist Feminists has found in their earlier research. As a china¡¦s woman, no matter she be a daughter, be a wife, or be a mother, she has to carry more unequal responsibility under the traditional gender norm. They have no choice but do all the caring works, such as bearing children, doing housework, which were thought to be women¡¦s obligation. China¡¦s women also an important part of the labor force in the farm. Yet, china¡¦s women have been cheap labor because of their low education, few choices of jobs, and their heavy load of housework. Although the economic structure of china has changed, the life experiences of china¡¦s women keep influenced by their traditional ethnic/gender norm. In sum, the research tries to make the points on the china women¡¦s labor and virtues, and attempts to understand how the patriarchal ideology and structure works on the china women

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Chinese television industry has witnessed the rise of a new form of television programme, Chinese Women’s Makeover Shows. These programmes have quickly become a great success and have received enormous attention from growing audiences. The shows are themed on educating and demonstrating to the audiences the information and methods needed to beautify their faces and bodies and consume products accordingly. The shows are different from earlier Chinese fashion television programmes in format, and are also different from western makeover shows that have personal transformations of external appearance as their subject. The importance of adopting these shows as a research topic lies in the fact that the shows not only represent the images of contemporary Chinese women and propose a series of standards that a modern Chinese woman is advised to abide by in terms of body presentation and appearance, but also reflect the characteristics of Chinese female consumers and the rising consumer culture of China in general. It concerns the challenges and anxieties that have been brought to every woman in China. The thesis starts with an overview analysis of this flourishing genre of television programme and outlines its status quo, format and production techniques. In the following three chapters, it takes three years (2010-2012) of episodes of the three most popular Chinese Women’s Makeover Shows, Queen, Pretty Women, and I am a Great Beauty as the main samples for analysis, aiming to scrutinise 1) the idealised femininity represented in the shows and the cultural context from which the features derive; 2) the self-presentation promoted as appropriate in the shows and how it relates to the reality of Chinese women’s daily life; 3) the body maintenance that the shows urge upon their audiences as regards consumption for the female body and to what extent this epitomises and functions in constructing a consumer society with Chinese characteristics. The thesis intends to fill a gap in academic research with a systematic analysis of the prevailing phenomenon of the Chinese Women’s Makeover Shows and an in-depth study concerning the shows’ meaning-making process within their cultural context.

No description available.

This research is a pioneering longitudinal study of Chinese women entrepreneurs that focuses specifically on the government economic reform period of 1980 to the present. The study makes a significant contribution to entrepreneurship studies and it contributes to our knowledge of women entrepreneurship in transitional economies. The study investigates the drivers that influence and factors associated with Chinese women's entrepreneurial success in China. The research also explores the motivations of Chinese women entrepreneurs in starting-up their business in the reform periods across the last three decades. A total of nine Chinese women entrepreneurs in three groups who set up their own business in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s were investigated for an in-depth interview, using narrative approaches, in a qualitative research methodology. How Chinese culture, government policy and massive domestic market demand have influenced Chinese women’s entrepreneurial identity and motivation are the main outcomes of the project. Additionally, the barriers, family issues and effects of relationships were uncovered during this research.

Since the economic reform and opening up in 1978, the social environment on the Mainland of China has been changed. A golden opportunity was created for the development of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) which have been growing rapidly in recent years. Before the reform carried out throughout China, the Government had an overall and exclusive control of and thus took full responsibilities for all affairs. Under such a circumstance, community organizations and market factor were subject to the country, and short of independence and autonomy. After the reform, market-oriented economy has been creating an advantageous social environment for NGOs; in the meanwhile, a great number of NGOs have risen and developed bringing more vitality to the market economy. It is in this way that the shape of the civil society and the stability of market economy have become a whole, inseparable life community. Following Corporatism, this dissertation highlights the idea that the relationship between a country and a society is not only a vertical one, but also one of mutual benefit, cooperation and exchange. This paper will explore Chinese women¡¦s NGOs¡¦ systematic management, diverse situation, and existing problems in the post-reform China, which had undergone multiple major impacts, including the Government Party¡¦s (PRC) loosened control over community organizations, dramatic changes in party relationship and official functionality, the awakening of women¡¦s self consciousness of their own rights as a result of international women¡¦s movements and UN World Conference on Women, and the raised socio-economic level over the country. This dissertation will focus on the development of women¡¦s NGOs in 1990s in China, and be supported by cases of the All-China Women¡¦s Federation (ACWF) and other kinds of female NGOs current situations. This paper will also discuss how the ACWF has been changed from a regular governmental organization into a significant NGO. With the spreading concept of civil society on the mainland, Chinese women¡¦s NGOs have also bloomed step by step into a more diversified entity, especially those build up from the community.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-115). Also available in print.