Rural-Urban Migration and Gender Division of Labor in Transitional China*

Over the last two decades, the most prominent social and economic changes in the world have been observed in formerly socialist economies. The process, commonly understood as ‘transition’, has gendered consequences and differential implications for men and women. Though much of the research on transitional economies has overlooked the gender dimension, some recent studies on Russia and Central and East Europe have found that women’s labor market positions have declined because of their great vulnerability in times of economic difficulties, the resurfacing of traditional gender stereotypes, the removal of central planning mechanisms that ensured wage equality, and segregation in the labor market (e.g. Grapard, 1997; Reilly, 1999; Pailhe, 2000). China economists have likewise focused on the issue of gender wage gap (e.g. Maurer-Fazio et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2000). In this article, I aim at highlighting some of the gendered outcomes of transition in relation to rural-urban migration in China. More specifically, I focus on the relations between migration and gender division of labor. I argue that labor migration and the labor market must be understood in the context of social and economic changes during transition. The so-called ‘socialist market economy’ model, which juxtaposes market mechanisms with a planned economy, demands a reexamination of the role of the state. Unlike in the socialist period, the transitional state prioritizes economic goals and measures that can help boost economic growth, including increased labor mobility. But the state continues to be a planner of the economy and have at its disposal instruments of control, such as the household registration system, from the socialist period. At the same time, peasants are increasingly vulnerable and must embrace labor migration as a source of livelihood. What transpires is therefore a peculiar situation in which the state encourages and enables the development of a new capitalist-like labor regime, which in its pursuit of cost-minimization and profit-maximization fosters segmentation and division of labor. Moreover, socio-cultural traditions rooted in Confucianism, which were constrained during the Maoist period, are once again resurfacing and they further reinforce forces of stratification and division of labor. What all of these mean to men and women involved in rural-urban labor migration, I argue, is that they are channeled into gender-segregated jobs and that gender division of labor is increasingly becoming a dominant mode of household production in the countryside. Though gender segregation in the labor market is widely observed in western industrialized economies (e.g. McDowell, 1999: 124), in the Chinese case it must be understood in relation to institutional and sociocultural changes during transition. Volume 27.1 March 2003 24±47 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research