ABSTRACT
Bei is located near the city of Shaoxing in the northeast of the Zhejiang Province in southeastern China. As one of the traditional grain-growing areas, farming has been particularly labor intensive in Bei Village. In Bei Village, both local wage work and self-employed jobs have been prevalent, and the "informal sectors" such as private business have been an important part in its industrialization process. Before local industries took off at the beginning of the 1980s, women had benefited more from the flexibility in working in home-based needlework despite the governments' political scrutiny. The nascent private sectors were rooted in the tradition of sidelines in peasant households. The family and community strategies to deal with market risks could be traced back to the unique industrialization and privatization processes in Bei Village. Family goals and individual goals could be mixed to defend women's choices, either to pursue market success or to work intermittently.
