How Does Women Industrialisation Is Separated From The Global Environment Of Women And Industrialization?

1. Literature review----women and industrialisation

The particular experience of Chinese women factory workers is in no ways separated from the global environment of women and industrialisation. In order to examine the Chinese case, it is necessary to firstly review the literature on women and industrialisation world-widely. However, as the routes to and features of industrialisation are very different in the developed countries and the developing ones (see Butschek, 2006; Stoneburner and Angelos, 2005; Myrdal, 1970), the following review will have a greater focus on the developing countries, which have more comparative value to China. It offers both a theoretical framework and a bigger context for china’s case to stand against.

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2011, p.6; Sterling, 1985, p.6). Second, the subordination of women in patriarchal system intensified women’s exclusion in industrialisation(Jóhannsdóttir, 2009), by the covert social norm of “gender division of labour”--- the differentiation of tasks on the basis of gender in which men are often engaged in paid work as the breadwinners for families, while women are often in unpaid work, doing housework and taking care of the families (Crompton, 2007; Washbrook, 2007, Stoneburner and Angelos, 2005; Künzler et al, 2001; Eviota, 1992). Furthermore, as the requirement of industrial production for a regular work in factories conflicted with women’s traditional assumed roles of child-rearing and household duties, it created the dilemma for women between familiy obligations and ability to earn money, making their change in work choices to form “female work patterns” in domestice service, or as clerks, teachers, or nurses, etc as the (McBride, 1977, p.284). Women’s dual functions of work and housework made their decline number in industrialisation (McBride, 1977, p.292). Their conclusion is that the industrial revolution did not create a “golden age” for women to work. Women was historically excluded in the formal process of

Another round of re-evaluation of the role of women in industrialisation was conducted, creating heated debate on whether this trend is truly beneficial for women. Some researchers continue to support the modernisation and dependency theories, upholding the importance of both the waged working opportunities to women (Lim, 1990; Sen, 1996, p.822), and the opportunities to change the traditional division of labour within the household (Marxists and neoclassical theory, cited in Pearson, 2000, p.184). Contrary to that, more and feminists began to point out the exploitation that the working opportunities may give to the women workers. Kreye found the evidence that women are paid generally 20%-50% lower than men in similar jobs (Frobel et al, 1979, cited in Elson and Pearson, 1981, p.92). Apart from the lower wages, Baud(1992) and Edgren(1982) questioned the working and health conditinos, training and promotion, and social security benefit for these women workers. These lead to the description of “sweatshops” for them (WOW, 2011; Green; 1996). Elson and Pearson (1981), using the “Gender and development” approach (GAD) which emphasises gender relations be considered rather than simply incorporating women, argue that there are inherent limits for the capitalist accumulation to dissolve the subordination of