ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s women had faced difficulties securing jobs, but as the economic reforms advanced into the 1990s the scale of redundancy became even worse. The incompetent performance and financial losses of state enterprises led to an aggressive restructuring that shattered the ‘iron rice bowl’.1 Millions of workers made an involuntary exodus from their former work units. In this chapter, I turn to women’s experience of returning home. ‘Returning home’ (huijia) was used to refer to leaving their jobs. Here I draw attention to the micro practices which underpinned the outcome of economic restructuring. What were the constraints on women and what opportunities were available to them? How did women experience the loss of their jobs? Was gender integral to this process? How did women themselves respond to a change that had such a great effect upon their lives?
The redundancy measures have taken various forms, represented by numerous terms used nationally and regionally. Most of the redundancies were from industrial work units (qiye danwei).
