ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political and economic context of Hong Kong. The rapid growth of Hong Kong from a small fishery village before the 1950s to a metropolitan city and an important financial centre in Southeast Asia in the 1990s seems like a fairy tale. In the last century, Hong Kong was only a small fishery port on the south coast of China. Hong Kong became a British colony in 1843 when it was ceded after the Opium War. Subsequently, the colony was extended to Kowloon and New Territories. The huge population and the scarcity of land are frequently mentioned in explaining the housing problems of Hong Kong. The chapter illustrates how a structural approach, one which is informed by development in the sociology of knowledge and uses technical aids such as the index of segregation and graphical trend analysis, helps to reveal the institutionalized disadvantaged position of women.
