Skip to Content

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

Deep Dive into Digital and Data Methods for Chinese Studies | Incompatible Rights: Gendered Work-Family Conflict under Changing Population Control Programs in Contemporary Urban China

Dr. Yun Zhou, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Chinese Studies, University of Michigan
Thursday, November 21, 2019
11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Room 100, Gallery Lab Hatcher Graduate Library Map
Free and Open to the Public. Light refreshments will be provided.

Work-family conflict is one of the central foci in gender inequality scholarship. Existing research has mostly considered the conflict as an incompatibility of commitments predominantly experienced by women. In this talk, I capitalize on China’s termination of the one-child policy in 2016, and introduce individuals’ perceived incompatibility of rights as another key dimension. Using a mixed-methods design that combines national surveys and in-depth interviews, I demonstrate that individuals espousing gender egalitarian beliefs, which emphasize women’s right to work over the primacy of women’s roles as wives and mothers, more strongly support the state’s role in limiting births. This support is underlain by the perception and experience that for women, work and family are incompatible beyond competing commitments: The expansion of individuals’ right to parent is viewed as at the expense of women’s right to work. Three interlocking forces underscore individuals’, particularly women’s, perception and experience of work-family conflict as an incompatibility of rights: 1) Macro-level reproductive and family policies that view women foremost as mothers and caregivers, from a state that exerts strong power over its citizens; 2) Meso-level discriminatory labor market conditions with limited recourse for claims-making; and 3) Micro-level gendered division of care work and normative expectations of women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities in marriage, procreating, and parenting.
Building: Hatcher Graduate Library
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Asia, Chinese Studies, Information And Technology
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University Library, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures