Girls' and Women's Labor and Household Production in China's Economic Transformation

中国经济转型中女童和妇女的劳动和家庭生产

• 批准号: 1238999
• 负责人: Melissa Brown
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-19 至 2013-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1238999&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Girls; Women; Labor; Household; Production

This project examines the labor and economic contributions made by Chinese girls and women in the early 20th century, before and during industrialization. It tests whether the now-defunct practice of footbinding served as a form of labor control, pushing girls and women to participate in lucrative handcraft production. The project contributes to gender studies, economic development studies, and their integration. If, as it turns out, economic change is more important in eliminating practices that are often viewed as injurious to women's bodies (such as female circumcision), then efforts to change these practices must address their economic basis, and not only work on the level of education and advocacy. Evidence from southern China suggests that footbinding was strongly correlated with local economic practices, but the southern pattern has never been tested in north and central China. Time is running out, as most elderly women who are the best source of information will be gone within the decade. This project surveys 1600 women about their own labor and that of their older female relatives, which will produce data on about 8,000 women going back to the 1880s. Sixteen sites across eight provinces were carefully selected to include locales with historical data available and to represent regional diversity. This project addresses the common misconceptions that girls played an insignificant economic role in China prior to the emergence of factory industrialism, and that footbinding, driven by cultural beliefs about beauty and sexuality, made female labor nearly worthless. Producing more accurate estimates of the labor inputs of Chinese girls and women contributes to contemporary research on global economic history. Understanding the economic implications of footbinding, which was once at the center of heated debate over women's bodily well-being, social integration, traditional cultural values, and human rights, contributes to current policy debates about women's rights.

该项目考察了中国女孩和妇女在世纪初工业化之前和工业化期间所做的劳动和经济贡献。它测试了现在已经不复存在的缠足做法是否是一种劳动控制形式，迫使女孩和妇女参与利润丰厚的手工艺品生产。该项目有助于性别研究、经济发展研究及其融合。 如果事实证明，经济变革在消除往往被视为对妇女身体有害的习俗（如女性割礼）方面更为重要，那么改变这些习俗的努力就必须解决其经济基础问题，而不仅仅是在教育和宣传层面上开展工作。来自中国南方的证据表明，缠足与当地的经济实践密切相关，但南方模式从未在中国北部和中部进行过测试。时间不多了，因为作为最佳信息来源的大多数老年妇女将在十年内离开。该项目调查了1600名妇女自己的劳动和她们年长的女性亲属的劳动，这将产生大约8,000名妇女的数据，可以追溯到19世纪80年代。在8个省的16个地点进行了精心挑选，包括与历史数据可用的地方，并代表区域的多样性。该项目旨在解决人们普遍存在的误解，即在工厂工业化出现之前，女孩在中国的经济中扮演着微不足道的角色，以及由关于美和性的文化信仰驱动的缠足，使女性劳动几乎毫无价值。对中国女孩和妇女的劳动投入做出更准确的估计有助于当代全球经济史的研究。了解缠足的经济影响，这曾经是关于妇女身体健康、社会融合、传统文化价值观和人权的激烈辩论的中心，有助于当前关于妇女权利的政策辩论。