Page 56 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

FEMININITY AND AUTHORITY 43
sector proved to be highly profitable as well as risky, men’s and women’s experiences
diverged greatly The uncertainties of the private sector required the sorts of cunning and
people skills thought unbecoming of women. According to Rofel’s study of Hangzhou
workers, by the 1990s, the main qualities associated with the private sector included the
ability to take risks, to mix with a wide array of people, to travel and make contacts. All of
these were identified as male attributes (Rofel 1999:102–3).
This refeminisation of women in favour of a more ‘traditional’ gender balance finds
parallels with the experience in post-communist Eastern Europe, where we find a similar
destabilising of gender roles, followed by a later public rejection of these models and a
return to ‘traditional’ sex stereotypes. According to Verdery, because socialist regimes
customarily required large labour forces, gender equality within the family was promoted
in order to free up women from clearly defined domestic roles within the home and to
liberate them from participation in the public workforce. She also argues that women’s
increased participation in the workforce and the state promotion of gender equality led to
their greater power within the family, while various state controls undercut male familial
authority (Verdery 1996:65). However, in post-socialist Europe, the state’s previous
usurpation of familial patriarchal authority has given way to policies and attitudes aimed at
recovering men’s lost authority in nuclear families. Now nationalist politics aim to reverse
the debilitating ‘mothering’ of socialism by ‘compelling women back into their nurturing
and care-giving roles “natural” to their sex, and restoring to men their “natural” family
authority’ (Verdery 1996:79–80).
Verdery’s theory that post-socialist systems reinvent femininity and masculinity in the
wake of revolutionary gender equality can help to explain the focus in many women’s
magazine articles in China on the importance of women maintaining and protecting their
feminine qualities, particularly when working in business. It could also help to explain the
ambivalence expressed by many women interviewed about the negotiation of femininity
in Chinese business and managerial contexts. It is inferred that by working in the private
sector or in a business that a woman is at risk of lessening or even forfeiting her femininity.
The private sector and particularly entrepreneurialism are seen as inherently masculine
and hence ‘risky’ spaces. Young single men are believed to be the most suitable candidates
for work in these fields, whereas women are aligned with the more feminine space of the
state sector (Rofel 1999:97).
When a woman enters the uncertain and masculine arena of private enterprise there
are a number of barriers to her success. First, discrimination is still a serious hindrance for
many women seeking employment in the private sector. Second, women are often the
first to be targeted when employers begin downsizing surplus labour. Additionally, some
organisations put pressure on their female employees to take longer maternity leave, thus
making it difficult for them to compete in the workplace. Finally, many women are being
encouraged into retirement at an earlier age than is stipulated by the state (Liu and Rong
1995:194; Wang 2000:65).
Following the downfall of socialism in Eastern Europe, housework has become
classified as non-work and thus receives no payment, the state no longer supports this
work and it falls back into the feminine domain (Verdery 1996: 81–2). In China both
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housework and childcare are once more promoted as women’s work. There are private