Gender and Work in Urban China: Women Workers of the Unlucky Generations

摘要

China's market-oriented reform, which is marked by a radical departure from the state-instituted socialist egalitarian system, has generated numerous debates and critiques regarding its varied impacts on people's lives. In urban China, state enterprise reform since the 1990s has not only spelt the end to life-time employment but has also resulted in massive layoffs of workers. Women workers in particular have disproportionately borne the brunt of job losses, which has resulted in increased gender inequality. Jieyu Liu's book offers a fresh new perspective by looking specifically into how a particular generation of women workers - "the unlucky generation" in the author's term - were singled out for work redundancy and how their "unlucky" fate in the current economic restructuring was directly linked to their generation's life experiences and state policy changes.