ABSTRACT
The Chinese workplace is disentangled in this chapter, focusing on organizations and companies specifically, with an aim to define the workplace in China for further analysis of women’s managerial careers. There are important distinctions among different forms of workplace. The urban workplace was characterized by a prominent work-unit system before 1978, whereas more diversified forms of business entities have emerged since 1978, dominated by state-owned companies and private businesses. Regardless of the various organizational settings, the results indicate the workplace is gendered in a twofold way. The first is associated with the gendered nature of Chinese organizations, which remains intact despite the transformation of the Chinese economy. The gendered workplace is further justified in terms of the gendered form of theorizing about Chinese organizations. Paternalistic leadership, an example oriented in Chinese organizations, remains strikingly male-biased in assuming males as default leaders and explicitly neglecting the role of women.
