ABSTRACT

China’s ascendancy as an economic superpower has been fueled, not only by a low-cost factory labor, but also by its rapidly expanding consumer market. Management prepares workers to minister to the minute personal preferences of customers by training its frontline workforce in the art of deference, linking performances of deference to femininity. Gender is a central axis of the new inequalities that have emerged in post-socialist societies. The economic and political restructuring of post-socialist economies disproportionately impacts women, who confront shrinking welfare spending and lay-offs, and are systematically excluded from real power in the political arena. The lobby of the BT transports the guest from the bustle of the streets of Beijing to an asylum of calm and exquisite comfort. The American general manager actually objected to the distribution of commodity items to hotel staff, in his view a debilitating vestige of the socialist “iron rice bowl”.