Female workers and (Neo)-Confucianism in

China and JapanPresented by Tingting Zhang

- China:- Confucianism- Chinese history about women- Female workers (work environment, welfare,

etc)- Dagongmei

- Japan:- Neo-confucianism - Japanese history about women- Female workers (work environment, welfare,

etc)- “retired husband syndrome” impacts

- Comparison and Improvement

China: Confucianism- Confucius- 551-479 B.C..- a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and

philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history

- the official state ideology of the Han

Confucianism Influences on Women:

- The Three Obediences and Four Virtues:- When she is young, she obeys her father - When she is married, she obeys her

husband - When she is widowed, she obeys her son.” - Morality, Proper speech, Modest

appearance, Diligent work- Impacts:

- women has low status- preferring boys to girls

Empress Wu Zetian:- 624-705 A.D.- Wu Hou, Tian Hou- the only female emperor in Chinese

history- support Taoism, Buddhism, education

and literature but against Confucianism

- increase freedom for women by raising their political positions

Foot-binding:- started at the Five Dynasties and Ten

states period and widespread at Ming dynasty

- reasons/impacts:- limit women’s freedom- good for fertility- emperors’ influences - see women as objects

Sun Yat Sen (1866-1925):- the father of Modern China- established the National Assembly of

the Republic of China- “The Three Principles of the People”- banned foot-binding- Western ideas

Women’s education:- “Flourishing education will promote gender

equality”- “The population of women’s education will

empower women to gain rights equal to those of men”

- From 1907 to 1916, the ratio of male to female students had almost doubled to 24:1.

- Chinese women were a main force inbourgeois revolution process.

Female workers:- By 1881, there were 11 filature

factories in Guangzhou with mainly female workforce

- In 1888, 100 filature machines operated mainly by women in Shanghai

- In 1887, 900 machines- Around 1888, tea and silk depots in

Shanghai started to hire women workers

Chairman Mao (1893-1976):

- the founder of the People’s Republic of China in 1949

- actions:- gender equality- marriage freedom- economic and education opportunities- supported female organizations

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976):- criticized confucianism- opposed capitalism - confucianism is not the

main ideology then- Buddhism, Taoism,

Maoism, Marxism...

Marriage freedom:- The first marriage law, April 1950- abolition of arranged/forced

marriages, child marriages and concubines.

- stipulates freedom of marriage and monogamy

- between 1951 and 1956, about six million couples divorced

Education:- Chairman Mao encouraged parents

to send their daughters to school- In 1986, the first Compulsory

Education Law enacted by Deng Xiaoping

- The admission rate of girls aged from 7 to 11-year-old increased from less than 20% before 1949 to 96.2% in 1992.

- Now, 9-year compulsory education

Communism (planned

economy):- Helped women enter work force as

pilots, doctors, factory workers and farm machine operators

- Still, women were expected to do housework

- Jobs were arranged- Outputs were shared - Nation assigned food

A typical Maoist woman:- woke up at 5 am- made breakfast for the family- sent kids to school- went to work- rushed to butcher shops for meat after work

with a ration card and queued- rushed to vegetable stores and waited in

another line- walked up the stairs with all the stuffs- made dinner- washed the dishes and did housework- slept

Economic Reformation (1978-now):

- Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997)- socialist market economy- First began in agriculture, farmers can keep

their output after paying a share to the state- Created a series of special economic

zones such as Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Xiamen for foreign investors

Two effects of the rapid economic reformation:

- Increased employment opportunities given to poor rural migrant women to work in new private enterprises (dagongmei)

- many women employed in the old state owned enterprises (SOEs) got fired due to restructuring

- The Ministry of Labour reported that in 1997, while women accounted for only 39 percent of China's work force they made up nearly 61 percent of its laid-off workers.

Female workers in China:- The All China Women’s Federation:

- In 1949, 600,000 women employees in China, approximately 7.5 percent of the total labour force.

- By 1978, female employees had reached 31.28

million, about 32.9 per cent of the total workforce

- In 2004, there were 330 million female workers, accounting for 46.7 percent of the total working population

Dagongmei:- Reasons:

- poverty (100 million people in rural areas live under international poverty line)

- income gap between the rural and urban areas

- low status in the family- send money back to family- support their brothers or male siblings- lack financial support to continue studying

“Hukou” system impact:- allow rural residents to migrate for

work- doesn’t allow migrant workers to

change residence or claim any benefits in the cities

- different resources such as education between rural and urban areas

Unequal pay:

- According to a survey by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), women made 62.7 percent of what men made in 2000.

- Rural women made 40.2 percent of what men made the same year

- Women are more likely to get lower-level jobs and be unemployed than men. The unemployment rate for women in 2000 was 13 percent compared to 6.4 for men.

Workplace issues:- unpaid maternity benefit- illegal firings for being pregnant- overwork- unsafe working conditions- sexual harassment- ...

The sexual harassment of women factory workers in Guangzhou

- 134 respondents

Sexual Harassment

Reasons for not reporting:

- Be considered as a private issue

- The public blames the women themselves

- Very common in the service industries, academia, finance, and many professional workplaces

- lack help from China’s official government-led trade union or from the All-China Women’s Federation

- unaware of their labor rights

Japan:- Empress Suiko (554-628):

the first of eight women to take on the role of empress regnant

- other seven were Kōgyoku/Saimei, Jitō, Gemmei, Genshō, Kōken/Shōtoku, Meishō and Go-Sakuramachi.

- protect imperial power- empower women

Heian Period:- women in Japan could

inherit property in their own names and manage it by themselves: "Women could own property, be educated, and were allowed, if discrete, to take lovers"

Edo period:- Tokugawa Shogunate (1602-

1868)- neo-confucianism- women could not own property- the Three Obediences and Four

Virtue- women were in all ways

subordinate to men

Women suffrage (1946):

- high schools became coed - 26 women's universities were opened- there were 2,000 female police officers- A Labor Standards Law was passed in 1947,

it had regulations which covered equal pay, working hours, maternity leave, menstruation leave (2 days a month), and holiday leave

Meiji Restoration (1968):

- Emperor Meiji wanted to learn Western knowledge and technology

- The Japanese imported whole factories from England, and employed hundreds of thousands of women to work in them.

- By 1900, 250,000 women worked with low wages in the textile industry and they accounted for 63% of the industrial labor force.

World War II (1939-1945):- Almost 2.5 million men served in

the Japanese armed forces, approximately 17% of the male working population.

- At the end of the war, 7190,000 men were serving in the armed forces.

- Women found themselves working in coal mines, steel mills, and arms factories.

- Wives were now in complete control of the home.

Post-war period：

- Karoshi (1980)：“ death from overwork”- Bubble Economy effect- Zaibatsu: work for long hours, hierarchical

workplace - lots of pressure, need their wives’ support

Female labor participation rate drops - In 1900, 63% of the industrial workforce

was composed of women- In 1960, the figure stood at 36.1%- In 1975, 29.6%- In 1980, 27.1%- Of the total Japanese work force in 1980,

33.8% were women, however only 19.8% of their positions were considered permanent.

Divorce law:

- 2008, wives can get half of their husbands’ pensions if they are housewives

- divorce rate increases- The divorce rate in Japan has risen by

26.5% in 10 years, according to the health ministry.

Divorce law:- The number of divorces among couples married

for 20 years or more hit 42,000 in 2004, double those recorded in 1985.

- The BBC's Jonathan Head in Tokyo says many wives increasingly resent how little their husbands contribute to home life and are seeking divorce when, after retirement, the men show no sign of changing their habits.

Retired husband syndrome:- It is a condition where a woman begins to

exhibit signs of physical illness and depression as their husband reaches, or approaches, retirement.

- Reason:- Baby Boomer generation of Japan think:

men should be breadwinners and work to support his family, and women were to be not only a homemaker but also to show a level of adoration for her salaryman husband as reward for his bringing in the money she used to look after their children and socialize with her friends.

Well-educated

- Japanese women are more educated than any of their female peers in the rich world except those in Finland and Canada.

- Citing 2005 figures, the report said 42.5% of Japanese women had a college degree, substantially higher than the 28.5% on average among the OECD countries.

Gender discrimination:- Male employees continue to be favored more broadly:

the report said women across the OECD countries are 20% less likely than men to find a paid job, and they earn on average 17% less.

- Only 67.4% of Japanese women aged 25 to 54 have a job, 15% less than the best-performing countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. By comparison, nearly 93% of their male counterparts in the same age cohort are employed, a rate higher than that of any country in the group save Iceland and Mexico.

Endogenous Growth Theory:

- Y = A Ka Hb L1-a-b

- Human capital: education

- Social capital: harmony, law and order, lack of corruption

Improvements for China:- empower women through education - access to information for dagongmei- open political positions for women- loosen “hukou” system- increase female welfare- equal pay for the same work- protect female workers by law- …- probably? following Japan’s path?- But! Still, male-centred!

Improvements for Japan:- universal day care- equal pay - flexible working hours for

part time jobs- promote females in

workplaces- ...

Japan:- If, over the coming 20 years, Japan raised its female labor

participation rate from 62 percent to 70 percent—that of its Group of Seven industrial countries (G7) compatriots excluding outlier Italy—then its per capita GDP would be approximately 5 percent higher.

- Raising the female labor participation rate even further, say to that of northern Europe, could increase per capita GDP by an additional 5 percent.

References:China's Female Factory Workers Face Widespread Sexual Harassment

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-12-10/chinas-young-factory-workers-face-widespread-sexual-harassment

Working women in China: second class workers

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/working-women-china-%C2%96-second-class-workers-note-1

全球资本与生产过程中的政治冲突——读《中国女工》http://www.zgxcfx.com/Article/2948.html

Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+) (modeled ILO estimate)http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS

Gender Difference in History: women in China and Japan

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/essay-04.html

Empress Wu Zetian

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine6.html

References:The Peculiar History of Foot Binding in China

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/the-peculiar-history-of-foot-binding-in-china/279718/

Sun yat sen

http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/sun-yat-sen-71.phpEmployment of Women in Chinese Cultures: Half the Skyhttps://books.google.ca/books?id=AjiqZATK0x4C&pg=PA188&lpg=PA188&dq=chinese+women+worker+and+confucianism&source=bl&ots=fYJXDf9-Sc&sig=ov9rqwYXOoWob_YBVBbC_YQ5fVs&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ei=-k8OVZvoJaiwsAT9p4GoCw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwCw#v=onepage&q&f=falseChanges in Chinese Love and Marriage Valueshttp://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/special/13/5996-1.htm

CHINESE WOMEN: THEIR STATUS, CONFUCIANISM, COMMUNISM AND VILLAGE LIFEhttp://factsanddetails.com/china/cat4/sub21/item105.htmlThe Gender Equal Fruits of Chinese Women's Educationhttp://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/special/13/5992-2.htm

References:"Dagongmei" - Female Migrant Labourers

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/dagongmei-female-migrant-labourersWomen in Japanese Society: Their Changing Roleshttp://www2.gol.com/users/friedman/writings/p1.html

Japan retired divorce rate soars

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4741018.stm

Can Women Save Japan (and Asia Too)?http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2012/09/steinberg.htmOECD: Japan Wasting Its Female Labor Powerhttp://www.forbes.com/2008/07/03/japan-employment-gendergap-markets-econ-cx_jc_0703markets03.html