| Abstract | The rural reform since 1978 in China has brought significant changes to people in
various dimensions. People's living standards have been raised and labour efficiency improved
dramatically. With the improving material conditions, have come changes in social relations,
more specifically the gender relations. This study examines the impacts of the household
responsibility system which is the main element of the rural reform, on women's condition and
position and the consequent gender relations in the rural transformation. It takes two villages
in Zhejiang Province, China as cases. Gender analysis tools were applied in the research
methodology. Information was gathered through structured questionnaire survey, informal and
group discussion and screening of time series records of village production activities,
organization and regulations.
The study first looks back to the days of collective farming where labour and land were
organized in production teams. Collective farming succeeded in land management, i.e., land
development, organic farming, shifting single cropping to a triple cropping system to intensify
land use, establishing effective water and irrigation system and setting up social welfare and
security system. However, collective labour management produced egalitarianism which led to
low efficiency of labour input and free riding in work responsibility. Further, such
egalitarianism did not exist between men and women and collective farming did not guarantee
gender equality. With double deduction in their work value, women eventually got 57% of
men's work value in farming.
Under such circumstances, the household responsibility system was welcomed by men
and women to improve labour efficiency and promote the production incentives. The new
system has achieved this general objective of the rural reform. However, land management by
individual households has faced problems of degradation of farming facilities and land
underutilization. With available opportunities in the non-farming sectors, returns from
conventional crop farming have become low, which, along with high labour cost, led to deintensification
of farming. This is reflected in land being kept idle, land under-cultivation, the
backward shift from triple cropping to one rice crop, and the shift of the cropping system from
the state-assigned conventional crops to market crops and only subsistence grain production.
In spite of the low income from conventional crop farming, many households have to keep the
land for family security and women have become the land keeper while the male labour force
go out to earn cash from business and other non-farming activities. Farming remains women's,
particularly married women's, main occupation and men's secondary occupation. This process
of feminization which started in the initial stage of rural industries during collective farming,
has been intensified and gender division of labour has become more distinct under household
farming. Women who remain on the land take up cash crop cultivation, like vegetable and
fruit production, and animal raising as an important alternative in making a living. They
improve their economic and living condition through their family and own efforts. Purchasing
power has increased significantly. It is emphasized that this does not mean an overall
improvement in production condition. The deteriorating condition in agricultural production facilities, like shrinking irrigation water supplies and services and degrading environment has
affected women as the main producers.
Although women also earn their income from cash crop farming, the profit from
industries and business is much more than that from farming. Women's smaller involvement
in non-farming activities implies their lower cash earning capacity. Those young and
unmarried women who worked for independent cash income from industries have increased
their bargaining power at home, but the general pattern of women in non-profitable subsistence
farming and men in business brings about income disparity. Women's labour contribution is
perceived by their husbands to be much less than their own, which in tum affects their
bargaining position. Alongside the economic disparity brought about by the rural reform,
women's position in terms of control over rural resources, decision making, and reproduction
right does not seem to be improved. In the strengthened patrilocal marriage system, women's
control over land as subsistence security has become conditional. Women's decision making
at the village community is rare. Son preference remains prevalent and has even become
stronger which is the effect of a disintegrating social system and increasing inter-household
conflicts caused by the rural liberalization.
From these arguments, it is concluded that the improvement of women's condition
does not necessarily lead to the improvement of women's position. Although women's
position at home is high in terms of their control over family finance, strong say in household
management and men's sharing of household work, there is a time-delayed effect of the
ideological renewal and institutional support in three decades of post-revolution period, in the
sense that in the new economic expansion, withdrawal of institutional support and ideological
renewal has affected gender relations in the family. Women's position in the family cannot go
far without changes in society. |