Panel
3. Prosperity, the Pains of Growth and its Governance
One unexpected consequence of China’s One Child Policy is a sharp increase of the number of well-educated women in its reform era. While globally women's educational attainment is negatively correlated to fertility rate, the social norm of heteronormative marriage and child-rearing remains predominant way of life. Concerned about the ‘population crisis’ with its dropping birth rate and fast aging population, the Chinese state has turned to pro-natalist policy that encourage married couples to have more children since 2021, despite the lack of supportive maternity and child-care policies. China’s essentialist gender discourse natrualises motherhood that has led to the so-called ‘widow-style childrearing’, with little input from the paternal side. How do young women react to such reproductive dilemma, with both fear for missing out and the anxiety of being overwhelmed? How do women gain knowledge, exchange ideas about their reproductive choices and experiences? In what way cyberspace communities can provide alternative spaces for these somehow stigmatised discussions? To investigate these issues, we have compiled a dataset that consists of 3153 posts under the topic ‘What does reproduction mean to women?’ from Douban, a popular forum among China’s young female urbanites from March 2020 to June 2022. Currently, we are coding and analysing the dataset with the aim to understand the general themes, topics, values emerged from these discussions. In this talk, we will share our preliminary findings from the ongoing data analysis and discuss the significance of such alternative public space online for China’s gender dynamics and feminist movements.
Co-Author 1
Yunyun Zhou, University of Oslo
Kailing Xie
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom