| Summary: | The primary concern of this thesis is the association between development and gender
relations. At three levels: international, national and regional, various concepts of development
are studied, and their different impacts on women are examined. In the first part of the thesis,
an attempt is made to compare the different experience of women in capitalist countries and
in socialist countries. In the second part, the People's Republic of China is chosen as a case
study at the national level. The focus of this part is on how the different development
frameworks affected the lives of rural women in the PRC's forty-five year history under the
Communist Party. In the last part of the thesis, the author concentrates on studying women's
lives at the regional level in the Pearl River delta, which is located in Southern Guangdong
Province. The major interest here is how women's lives in Pearl River Delta have been
changed since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initialized a new development program in rural
China. In the conclusion, it is suggested that a gender-sensitive approach should be
emphasized in international, national and regional development planning.
The major sources for the second and the third parts of the thesis are from the Chinese
periodicals, including Chinese official publications, such as Zhongguo Funu [Women of China],
Renmen Ribao [People's Daily] and Nanfang Ribao [South China Daily]. Some community
studies conducted by English-language scholars are also utilised in these two parts. It is also
part of the intention of the thesis, which is through these various research sources to present
the different points of views on women in rural China.
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