개혁사회주의의 性편향성 - 개혁기 중국 농촌여성의 사회경제적 지위 변화 -

• 영문명: Gender Bias of Reform Socialism : The Changing Socioeconomic Status of Rural Women in Reform-Era China
• 발행기관: 이화여자대학교 한국여성연구원
• 저자명: 장경섭(Chang Kyung-Sup)
• 간행물 정보: 『여성학논집』제12집, 289~315쪽, 전체 27쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 여성학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 1995.12.01

영문 초록

Economic reforms in socialist and former socialist countries have required grassroots people to undergo fundamental and drastic changes in the basic conditions of work and family life. Amidst the rapid transition from the socialist planned economy to the capitalist or quasi-capitalist market economy, people in increasing numbers have been trapped in a deadlock situation where they are neither materially protected by the socialist arrangements for unconditional employment and subsistence, nor functionally integrated into the new system of market-based division of labor and commodity exchange. This dilemma seems especially problematic for women and female-headed households. The logic of liberal economic restructuring implicitly proposes that women's equal entitlement to social employment and wage, a socialist principle advocated for decades, is not necessarily compatible with macro-economic efficiency. Once discharged into local communities and families, women's trouble is aggravated as they are now subjected to resuscitated habits and ideologies for gender segregation and thus unfavorably treated in newly available market-oriented economic activities. Destabilization of grassroots people's work and life in the market transition of socialist economies, compounded with gender bias in elite economic theory and grassroots social custom, tends to cause a rapid feminization of poverty and alienation. This paper attempts to present an overall review of the changing socioeconomic status of rural women in reform-era China. The review will be based upon a theoretical proposition that Chinese rural women's socioeconomic status is critically shaped by the interplay between patriarchal liberalism embedded in the market economy and patriarchal familialism embedded in the peasant household economy. This structural condition manifests itself throughout the life course of average rural women. Son preference is reinforced as rural families become more and more conscious about the need for sons not only in securing old-age support, but also in taking advantage of newly available market-oriented economic opportunities. Son preference interacts with the strict family planning policy, leading to female-targeted abortions, concealments, and even infanticides. School-age rural girls are forced to skip classes or drop out from schools as their parents, who do not see much value in investing in their daughters' education, want them to help with familial farmworks or household chores. More and more rural girls try to evade such ill-fated circumstances by moving into various types of urban places, though not many of them are likely to acquire opportunities for stable employment. When men and young girls move into urban places, middle-aged women are left with the mission of maintaining and improving agricultural productivity. Now married rural women are politically encouraged to maximize their role as the core workforce in agricultural production, while agriculture continues to suffer from insufficient state investment, low profitability, and primitive working conditions. There is an interesting contrast in the nature of socioeconomic transformation between rural and urban women. While the above symptoms of gender-biasd reform in the countryside are much less pronounced in the cities, urban women are facing different types of discrimination. Managerial reform in urban state-enterprises is geared to institutionalization of the labor market, which in turn necessitates massive pay-cuts, temporary and permanent lay-offs, and early retirements. As women are much more likely to become targets of these measures, this reveals the gender-biased perspective of reformist political leaders and enterprise managers who seem to analyze the Chinese economy much more "overwomaned" than "overmaned". This urban-rural difference does seem to attest to a better situation of urban women but constitutes another manifestation of the gender-biased nature of post-

목차

Ⅰ. 서론

Ⅱ. 중국적 사회주의의 性질서

Ⅲ. 가족중심적 시장경제개혁의 性편향성

Ⅳ. 세대별 여성문제

Ⅴ. 도시 여성과의 비교 - '여성과잉고용(overwomaning)' 증후군

Ⅵ. 결론 - 先富논리의 性질서에 대한 합의

참고문헌

Abstract