ABSTRACT
China had achieved considerable gender equality in the workplace in terms of a relatively high female labor force participation rate and a lower gender wage gap, compared to other countries during the Mao era. This chapter investigates how women’s market work affects their status in the household in rural China within a bargaining view of the household. It examines the relationship between market labor and status in rural China, where status is reflected by domestic labor time, responsibility for domestic tasks and household decision-making influence. The chapter explores women’s and men’s views about the status of women, market labor, and domestic labor, and how domestic work is shared between men and women in the context of rural China where there has been growth in wage earning opportunities for both men and women. It assesses the impact of women’s participation in waged work in the township and village enterprises sector on their domestic work burdens and decision-making influence in the household.
