SOAS Research Online

Abstract

I explored the gendered implications of economic reforms by collecting the life histories of older women workers who had been made redundant during the economic restructuring. I examined their experiences in the danwei (work unit) during the pre-reform period in China, and the role the danwei played as arbiter in the career and the personal lives of its employees. I argued that the highly interventionist role of the work unit continued the patriarchal role of pre-socialist institutions in shaping and constraining the life opportunities of women. Indeed, the study has shown that the women workers from the Cultural Revolution Generation had borne the brunt of sufferings accompanying China’s socio-economic development.