Page 37 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

24 DAVID S.G.GOODMAN
Information about women in Shanxi’s elite under reform derived from the interviews is
considered in terms of three broad groups: the wives of the new rich entrepreneurs; the
wives of leading cadres; and those few women who are either leading cadres or
entrepreneurs in their own right. Although the detail is by no means as rich, the profile of
the women that emerges is largely similar to that of the men who were more widely
presented as local and provincial leaders. In particular, the latter were characterised by
their intense localism, and the ties that bound them in various ways to the party-state
(Goodman 2001:132–56). There is, however, one crucial difference that characterises the
women at the centre of Shanxi’s elite: in addition to being the wives of the new rich and
the wives of cadres, occasionally women entrepreneurs, and even more occasionally
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leading cadres, they were all almost without exception also mothers. Moreover, the
size of family was by no means as restricted as might be thought to have resulted from the
implementation of the ‘one-child policy’. There is no suggestion that the women who appear
as having been economically, or for that matter politically, active either had small families
in order to return quickly to the workforce, or forwent having children for whatever
reason.
The numbers presented in Table 1.2, on the average number of children per family for
different categories of the local elite, indicates that small families were not the norm.
Exactly comparable figures for either the Shanxi population as a whole, or those who
were neither members of the new rich nor cadres, are not available. However, in 1998
the average size of family in Shanxi was 3.63 people, just slightly above the national
average of 3.58 people. In comparison, as can be readily calculated from Table 1.2, the
Table 1.2 Children of interviewees (number, 1996–98, by category of interviewee)

various categories of Shanxi’s elite had an average family size that ranged from at least 3.
79 to 4.7 people (Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1999:99, Table 4–5, ‘Household, Population
and Sex Ratio by Region’). Perhaps even more remarkably, these indicators of family size
are not significantly different if calculations are made in terms of those couples who
married before, and those who married after, the introduction of the ‘one-child policy’
in 1979.