Gender Inequality in the East Asia Family Unit.

While reading Susan Greenhalgh’s paper De-Orientalizing the Chinese Family Firm I could not help but draw links between my previous blog post about the stereotype of the Chinese work ethic and the family firm that Greenhalgh covers. In her paper, Greenhalgh seeks to deconstruct the discourse of the thesis on Confucian culture that had come about with the economic boom of Asia, especially the “four little dragons”, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Singapore, and South Korea (1994:746). Greenhalgh takes a feminist stance while reconstructing the discourse.  This stance led me to think back about Stevan Harrell’s article and visualize where women stood in his description of the working family unit. Written almost ten years before Greenhalghs article, but still well within the post-modern period, Harrell portrays the perspective of women within the Chinese workplace, and their motivations towards having a higher or lower work ethics. In thinking about the feminist perspective, Harrell did a wonderful job in portraying a well rounded perspective of Chinese work ethic. In this, perhaps unintentionally, Harrell is breaking down the Orientalist discourse of the family unit that Greenhalgh seeks to do herself.

Greenhalgh covers a vast argument in her paper, what stood out to me was the political interest in keeping the age old ideas of Chinese values within the family unit. When Taiwanese families transitioned from a family unit to a family business unit, like any other businesses first starting, resources are scarce and every resource one does have must be used efficiently. This includes human power; in the beginning, when the labour is needed, women served a larger role in the family business, however, when the business grew, and resource were less scare, women tended to drop out of the business role to take a more tradition position in the family at home (1994: 760).

The nationalistic pride of showing the family unit as also a business unit further established the gender inequality within the family. With this political idea, Greenhalgh is attempting to break down these Confucian accounts about the traditional family to bring to light the aspects of gender inequality that had been oppressed by the growing political units. In this paper Greenhalgh does an excellent job and rooting out all of the overlooked inequalities in the family and business unit.

References

Greenhalgh, Susan. 1994. “De-Orientalizing the Chinese Family Firm.” American Ethonologist 21(4): 746-775.

Harrell, Stevan. 1985. “Why Do the Chinese Work so Hard? Reflections on an Entrepreneurial Ethic.” Modern China 11(2): 203-226.