Women and development: aspects of the Chinese case under communism

• Main Author: Mo, Minru
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5213

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.