This dissertation is a study of women’s power and status in the domestic sphere; of gender politics; and of intergenerational relationships in rural Hunan in the past three decades. This research is the result of one year of ethnographic fieldwork. The field site, Fuxi village, is located in the northeast of Hunan Province, on the south shores of Dongting Lake. Most of the residents are the descendants of immigrants who moved from the neighboring counties in the first half of the twentieth century. The history of Fuxi village is relatively short. Since the emergence of a nation-wide tide of dagong (migrating to the cities and becoming temporary urban workers) in the late 1980s, more and more young laborers have moved to the cities in the southeast coastal areas. In many villages...[ Read more ]

This dissertation is a study of women’s power and status in the domestic sphere; of gender politics; and of intergenerational relationships in rural Hunan in the past three decades. This research is the result of one year of ethnographic fieldwork. The field site, Fuxi village, is located in the northeast of Hunan Province, on the south shores of Dongting Lake. Most of the residents are the descendants of immigrants who moved from the neighboring counties in the first half of the twentieth century. The history of Fuxi village is relatively short. Since the emergence of a nation-wide tide of dagong (migrating to the cities and becoming temporary urban workers) in the late 1980s, more and more young laborers have moved to the cities in the southeast coastal areas. In many villages it is common for men to leave for work and women to stay in the villages to take care of the old and the children; in Fuxi, however, it is usually the daughters-in-law who go to dagong.

In popular and academic literature, migrant woman workers are often portrayed as marginalized, as powerless, and as enduring various kinds of oppression and inequality. The last includes the patriarchal family, global capitalism, gender inequalities, the hukou (household registration) system, rural-urban division and the class system. The Hunan migrant women workers only come home for short periods of time during the holidays, while their husbands stay home to take care of the children and their farms. Once these woman come back home, however, they become the most powerful persons in their families. These women spend most of their time at the gambling table while all the household and farm work is left for their husbands. The women’s wealth and experience acquired in “advanced” places, as well as their mobility and fluidity, have gained them special status. The traditional gender politics and the intergenerational relationships have been completely reversed. The husbands take up the jobs that previously belonged to the women, and they complain, “These women have become our ancestors!”: it is the wives who have authority and are to be treated as if respecting one’s ancestors.