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

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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.