Gender and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

In view of the increasingly evident demographic imbalance in China in the recent past, women are seen as vital and indispensable in solving the issue of birth-rate due to their reproductive ability. Women are to play an important role in the national rejuvenation drive by birthing the new generation of the Chinese people. Women’s social role as wives and mothers has resulted in their economic role as secondary earners, as a result family obligations are seen as one of the biggest obstacles in women’s work. This paper evaluates the link between women's familial, social and political role in contemporary China, by applying Social Role Theory to establish women’s social role and Expectation States Theory, to discuss its connection with women’s economic and political roles.
The paper argues that attempts to reiterate traditional mindset of seeing women merely as “mothers”, reflects the continuing androcentric approach of the authorities in viewing women’s “bodies” as “wombs” used for nation building, right from ‘One Child Policy’ to ‘Three Child Policy’. Parallelly, there seems to be a systematic attempt to legalise and formalise the already existing practice of gender discrimination at work and recruitment so as to urge women to focus on marrying, birthing and bringing up children. The paper concludes that the concept of “mom jobs” and other perks and incentives for birthing and childcare are attempts to distract or silence women, indirectly pushing them to “go back home”, opposite to Mao’s attempt of pulling them “outside the four walls of the house”.

Biography

Dr Usha Chandran, Assistant Professor, Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, holds a PhD in Chinese from JNU. Her research interests include gender discrimination at work and other gender issues in China and comparison with India, interface between gender and language as well as popular culture and women’s subjectivity in literature. Presented papers in India and China, publications include authored book (due Aug 2025), two edited volumes (due 2025-26), all three by Routledge, as well as nine book chapters and journal papers.