The Dark Underbelly of China's Urbanization

A recent New York Times article on China's urbanization plans has been making the rounds---no fewer than six friends and colleagues have sent it to me. In a sentence: China is forcibly urbanizing its land and people through displacement and forced migration, and by construction on and development of rural areas. I've written on the mechanics of some of this in earlier posts. But this time I'll focus more on the human dimension.

Since the 1980s, when government reforms started emphasizing urban development, rural areas have been in a bind: unable to produce enough agricultural produce to feed the local areas, or to generate large enough profits to earn a living income. (More on this in a later post on food policy).

To look for work and a livelihood, many workers have migrated to cities to work in factories (light industry like textiles and electronics as well as heavy industry like steel mills). Because of the Hukou system, in which people are legally allowed to remain only where they have official residence, many (illegal) migrants live on the fringes of urban society, in a legal and logistical limbo. They are disallowed from receiving public services in cities, but they are also severed from the care of their families in the village. The migrant can be any member of the family---mother, father, child---while small children are often left in the care of the grandparents in the village, while mothers and fathers go to the city to look for work. Families often remain separated, and segregated, for years at a time.

In order to actually build these cities (apartment buildings, roads, malls, subways, etc), land is often confiscated from rural inhabitants. This usually starts with a local (rural) official's desire to build some big show project in order to demonstrate his (it's usually a male) management capabilities in order to secure promotions in the party. (Much of the development in China is driven by this desire, according to many people I've interviewed). These officials will offer to pay local families below-market prices for their land and tell them where to relocate to. If they do not accept the terms, they are often intimidated and violently coerced into moving. Sometimes the family will be forcibly detains while their household belongings are moved, their homes are destroed, and new construction begins---and only then will the family be released. With a new development under construction where their house used to be, the family has little choice but to relocate to a city or another area where they have little to no prospects.

Lastly, in the city itself, many (even college graduates) struggle to find work. Though this forced urbanization has been part of Beijing's plan to boost GDP through domestic consumption, economic growth may not be keeping pace---meaning that white collar, and even factory jobs are insufficient in number to employ China's growing urban population. Many younger urban Chinese are forced to borrow money from their parents (who have been saving for years) and even to take out bank loans to try and improve their prospects. This adds not only to the burdens on individuals and families, but also to the burgeoning Chinese financial system that is basing itself on an increasingly shaky mountain of municipal and consumer debt. This debt is only being offset by growing national GDP, mostly its (declining) exports that are in turn being maintained by cooked books and an artificially devalued currency.

These are some of the dark underbellies of the shining towers, malls, and subways that are dotting---and increasingly covering---China's landscape.

PDA and Street Safety

A few foreign friends here have pointed something out to me, of Chinese cities and people: in the west (and South Asia and Africa and elsewhere), if an attractive woman walks down the street, especially with some skin exposed, at least one male's eyes (and usually more) are sure to follow. In China, my interlocutors have never seen this; Chinese men, for the most part, hardly raise an eyebrow in such situations.

I asked a few Chinese and Chinese-American friends about this, and they gave me similar answers: Chinese men are simply not as sexualized as their non-Chinese counterparts. Even when young Chinese couples express affection (kissing or hugging, usually little more), which is quite frequent, it comes from sentimentality and not emotion. But the act is not sexualized the way it might be elsewhere.

To this, a few of my interlocutors added that Chinese men are simply less aggressive than their western counterparts, on the whole. In part due to this---and in part due to a strong police and spatial planning culture that enforce public safety---my Chinese-American and foreign female friends have said that, for the most part, they feel more comfortable walking down many Chinese streets at any time of day or night, with or without a companion, wearing just about anything, than they do in many other cities. In other places, they feel they have to be vigilant, on alert, or at least a little stressed from fear at times. This, of course, changes in places where the streets are wider, darker, and less trafficked.

All this is, of course, anecdotal. But still worthy of sharing, I thought.

Gender in China

I realize that much of what I've written so far about gender has been in the abstract, urban, or American contexts, and I've written little if any on that topic in China. So, with the huge caveat that I am an even newer student of gender issues in China than of any other place---apologies in advance for all the cliches---I'll use this post to do just that.

In line with my earlier post on the role of women in 'traditional' agrarian societies, Confucianism, which exerts a huge cultural influence on Chinese society, has something to say about this. To the newly initiated, Confucianism is a socio-religious way of organizing society based around the sayings and philosophies of Kongzi, a 6th Century BC scholar. As I learned at the Confucious Temple and Museum in Beijing, his basic frame of reference was a series of responsibility based relationships: hence the notion of filial piety (where a child ought to be really respectful to hir parents) and the Mandate of Heaven (which says that if the governed no longer feel that the governing are doing so appropriately, the former have the right to overthrow the latter). On women, Kongzi spoke of "three obediences and four virtues." The first are submission to father before marriage, the husband after marriage, and sons after the husband's death. Virtues are propriety in behavior, demeanor, speech, and employment. These were meant to be reciprocal to mens' roles, but as you can guess, it was pretty hierarchical.

In practice, women in China were traditionally quite objectified---Chinese author Hua Yu makes a reference to Henrik Ibsen's "Doll" in The Doll House as a metaphor for this. Hence we see former practices like the binding of women's feet to make them more attractive, girls being made to marry early, very few women in roles of power, etc.

Along came Mao Tsetung, leader of a 1949 Proletariat Revolution, who famously said that "Women Hold up Half the Sky." Foot binding was outlawed, and women were said to have an equally important in the people's revolution, contributing to the workforce and marrying at their choosing. Weathered, hardworking women were pictured in communist propaganda, in contrast with the pampered, sexualized and objectified "doll" image of early 20th century Qing Dynasty and Republican China. This desexualization and utilitarianism of women might not have been ideal, either, as it was still an imposition of one party's (the Communist Party's) values over all women.

The invasiveness of the state set its biggest precedent in 1979, when the government entered womens' wombs with its 'one child' policy. Though its initial intensity was minimized after local protests, the policy limits the number of children a family can have to one, in an effort to limit population growth---families would have to pay large fees if they had additional children. This was more strictly enforced in rural areas, where local officials had to meet strict population quota targets in order to gain promotions, often resulting in draconian effects like forced sterilization.

Families, meanwhile, tried to "game" the policy by getting sonograms to determine the sex of a fetus and aborting the girls. (Female infanticide was only a little less common). The coming generation, as a result, has had some very skewed gender ratios, with whole villages of male majorities. Some say that by 2020, 30 million men may not be able to find spouses due to numbers alone.

Urbanization has changed the dynamic quite a bit. As I'd written in my earlier post about cities and gender, urban spaces have been more kind to women owing to the type of economies and employment therein, more liberal attitudes, and other factors. Urban women have been just as competitive as men in university placement, manufacturing work, services, and business. And in an extremely unscientific survey of foreigners in Chinese cities---chatting with a dozen or two friends and acquaintances---women in their 20s and 30s lso appear to be more comfortable speaking English, interacting with and learning from foreigners, and interested in what happens abroad. Chinese women are visible in media and to a lesser extent, business and corporate culture. Government bureaucracies, however, remain old boys' clubs (more on that later).

Mass movements and ideologies ("isms") not directed by the state have been taboo in post-revolutionary China, where the only "doctrines" (zhuyi) were Maoist, or later state-led and nationalistic. As a result, I've been hard-pressed to learn much about any "feminism" or feminist "movements" anywhere in China. But as always, some interesting meetings and conversations coming up, so hopefully some of that void will be filled.

Gender in Cities - Eyes on the Streets

In my last post I talked about the role of cities in shaping gender roles. This time let's look at the role, sort of, of gender in cities.

Over the last few decades the world has seen massive revitalization of cities after they were basically abandoned by policies that favored suburbs (in America) and the countryside (in places like China and India). With this growth has come in-migration and of course questions about how cities should feel, look, and provide for their people---hence an emphasis on spatial design. People ought to feel and be safe; have access to homes, opportunities and resources; have employment and leisure opportunities; all, ideally, with ease and at a low cost. 

One of the biggest trends in urban design is what has been called "New Urbanism" by planners and architects, and "Smart Growth" by environmentalists. Both contend that urban ecosystems ought to have mixed use planning (with retail, housing, employment and institutions in the same, shared areas) that is easily accessible by cheap, easy, comfortable, and efficient walking, bicycle, or mass transit mobility. Think Copenhagen or Manhattan versus Levittown. The role of subways and mass transit is seminal to this type of development. While cars take up a lot of space per person to drive (large roads), park (lots and streetspace), mass transit takes up less space per person, allowing other activities (i.e. mixed uses) to use that physical space. 

There are plenty of benefits to this kind of design: access through proximity, innovation through knowledge spillover, smaller carbon footprints (per capita) owed to less car dependence, among others. One of the most important ones was what the urbanist Jane Jacobs called "Eyes on the Street." This meant that, because there were multiple uses of a single area, there would always be someone---a homemaker, a shopkeeper, a pedestrian, a peddler, an office worker---nearby, with an eye keeping a passive watch over a single street, 24 hours a day, inadvertantly policing it in case something happens. This kind of design is an inbuilt feedback system; it can help ensure against, or at least help deter, violent crime because potential criminals know there are witnesses and others who could intervene.

Though essentially gender-neutral, this type of mixed-use, eyes-on-the-street design does have specific implications for women. Sexual harassment and violence against women are among the types of crime that are most often deterred or stopped with many eyes on the street. Protection from kidnapping or other child victimization crimes are another---much as it takes a "village" to raise a child, it can take a neighborhood to protect her. Other elements of urban design that are or can be gendered are public safety; proximity between workplace, home, and childcare; childcare service provision (from changing stations to carriage/stroller accessibility).

Mass transit itself can be especially gendered. As I learned from a chat with WAPPP Director Victoria Budson, one of the most important determinants of women's advancement can be mass transit---we can have all sorts of programs to empower women, but if they are not able to access them (often while caring for children), they may be for naught. This, of course, will be affected by where mass transit goes, i.e. what it connects, and how easily. 

Second includes provisions for childcare---infrastructure that helps caregives bring carriages down stairs, possibly changing stations, services for pregnant women in crowded or dangerous spaces---on mass transit and its platforms. Though childcare after a certain age need not be gendered, the reality is that it definitely is, with mothers taking care of children far more often than fathers.

Lastly, how safe is mass transit for women--especially at night when there are fewer "eyes in the car" and during rush hour crowding. Are women safe from sexual predation of any order? Some places have policies like segregates sections, seats or train cars to ensure against it--but whether that's foolproof is up for debate. Other places have public service announcements and awareness campaigns, vigilant law enforcement, and other techniques.
 

Gender and Urban Economics

A few posts ago, I wrote about the economic history of gender roles. A lot of that assumed the progression of human economics until the industrial age. But when that revolution happened, we started to cluster into cities (again). Steel and iron mills and factories became the backbone of the industrial age, and because they had to be near rivers for industrial cooling and for transport, we started to settle around urban river systems.

The steel mill probably reinforced the economic dominance of men, but the industrial age in sum may not have had that sole effect. In places like late 19th century America, women were also on the front lines of the labor force, (wo)manning textile production in places like the Triangle Shirt Factory in New York City, a fire in which revolutionized the labor rights movement. And it was women like Emma Goldman that led union organizing across the manufacturing sector and produced labor rights like limited work days, weekends, and safer working conditions. Arguably, manufacturing and industry gave a jolt to women's rights in the US.

The rise of the service sector brought about the White Collarization of much of mainstream America. I haven't watched it, but apparently shows like Mad Men portray much of the misogyny that women had to put up with to gain access to industries like advertising. My friend Suzanne Schwartz, who's an anthropologist of advertising culture (and general marketing and ad whiz) told me that despite the misogyny in the show, advertising was in fact among the first fields in which women truly excelled (and were more or less allowed to).

So what does the service sector and agglomeration (clustering) say about gender roles? Well, first the economic utility of children goes down outside of rural areas. Children are not needed to help plow the fields; they cost more to raise (per child) in cities; and because the cost of living in metropolitan areas is generally higher, many households require two incomes (the husband and wife) to get by and prosper.

To all this, add the fact that cities tend to be more politically, socially, and economically liberal than more sparsely populated areas. Where a lot of people share a little space, they need to learn to compromise in order to share it effectively and efficiently. And because of that density, there are greater returns to scale on investments: a short-distance bus in a city can carry lots of people, but a bus in the countryside would be relatively empty). Accordingly, people don't mind pooling resources to make those shared investments that benefit many people.

So these vectors---less economic utility of children, the need for a second income, and a more liberal political culture---arguably combined in cities to amplify the economic and societal role of women.

Thoughts?

Why Gender Empowerment?

In my last post I rambled a little (and maybe incoherently) about my view of the economic history of gender roles. But this time I'll talk a bit about how that changed, how it happened, and why it's been good.

In addition to broader acceptance of equality and individualism, there are arguably two things that have driven the rise and acceptance of feminism as an ideology: 1) agitation and demand by women, 2) the perceived benefits of feminism. By the former (demand), I don't only mean taking to the streets, but maybe more subtle things: because there's at least one woman in every household, she can exert her views and influence in different ways: a daughter and a mother demand that the daughter go to college (in addition to the son); that the daughter also be allowed to work outside the home; the daughter and mother contribute their opinions and views openly. And if you ask many self-identified feminisits why they believe what they do, many will cite a single person or few person that paved a path for them by way of example.

 

By the latter (benefits), I mean a great deal of things: this lady as well as Eve Ensler and the Kinsey Reports of the 1940s argued that more empowered women are also more sexually empowered (i.e. they have better sex---I'm sure this would be a good impetus for men!!). In the case of the Grameen Bank, for example, empowering women ensures that the whole family is cared for; educating women ensures that all members of the family get educated. Empowered women are more interesting, and most importantly, I suppose, empowered women are better able to contribute to economic, social and intellectual activity---i.e. they are more useful!

There are millions of other reasons that empowering women is important. A number of these, ironically, stem from the fact that women aren't equal to women! They are "not equal" to men in that they are "different" from men; women have their own skills sets, capacities, and so forth, that are complementary, but not necessarily equal (and certainly not subordinate) to those of men.

 

(This is some footing on which I'm not entirely comfortable: I worry sometimes when we acknowledge the differences between sexes that we open up a slippery slope to saying "yes, women are different, and inferior." Responses to that in the comments box below would be very, very welcome!)

 

And yet, one difference I've read about is articulation: women are apparently better at or better with words because of the side of the brain they use more frequently and the more vast interconnectedness of their neurons (evidently something related to estrogen), which results in women being good writers and journalists. Another is empathy, which isn't unrelated, I think, to the Grameen Bank conclusion about educating a woman to educate a family. And I'm sure this empathy extends into benefits in the realm of conflict mitigation as well: if women are involved in a conflict resolution process, I'd venture to guess that peace would be more sustainable，as HKS's Swanee Hunt writes about in her work on alternative security paradigms. That, I think, is what those surveys about women bosses were getting at: their approach to leadership is different and very often, more enabling.

I think the main drivers for societal recognition and acceptance of, and support for women's empowerment will be (a) changes in values and ideology, (b) activism from local women and rights groups or pressure from outside sources---e.g. perceptions of and pressure on Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and (c) actual recognition of the merits of viewing women as complementary and not subordinate.

I think all three will happen around the world; they are happening and I think these trends will be strengthened. Even (c), knowledge of the benefits, is happening...but maybe not tangibly enough, so I think needs to be encouraged a little more. I mean, these benefits clearly exist, but I think they need to be discovered, explicated, and shared more.

As for changes in values, ideologies and "tradition" (as discussed in my last post) remain paramount. All too often we tell ourselves things that serve as crutches to real: Indians cite the number of female politicians and the central role of women in Hindu mythology to gloss over the day to day practice of female infanticide, daughters being educated for marriage, women being treated like sex objects, rampant sexual harassment and violence, a paucity womens representation in a great deal of decision-making, trafficking of women and girls that goes neglected under the noses of law enforcement, etc.

In the US, the disconnect is often greater because the expectation/assumption is that we're "liberal," "progressive," and "free," yet we continuously gloss over so many inequities.

 

Again, all of these views comes from a relatively cursory overview of a very small section of literature (admittedly, much from Betty Friedan, who was criticized for ignoring everyone but middle class, suburban white Americans). So add in issues of class, geography, culture, and economics, and norms will change drastically.

 

Nonetheless, I think and hope that those 3 vectors (ideology, pressure, and recognition) will continue to permeate societies until we see some very important revolutions.

Gender Imbalances in Society

I've admittedly been looking and writing mostly about broader urban issues so far.  But since it's specifically from the purview of gender issues in Chinese urbanism this summer, I figure it’d be good to have a post or two about my own take on the current state of the gender imbalance in let‘s say “society，”This is taken from a conversation I had with my dear friend and colleague, Rajeswari Rajagopalan, a who’s one of India‘s foremost strategic analysts, on gender issues in our workplace. But it turned into a long conversation in gender issues in society. Blogs, I've found, are places for guided rants, so here's one on why (I think) things are the way the are:

 

June 5th, 2013

The economic structures of "traditional" society (up 'til the last century) were largely manual labor based, almost necessarily ensuring the centrality and dominance of the male in economic production and in turn in social cohesion. People have argued that this started with the plow thousands of years go: before the plow, men and women were equal economically in that both could till soil and gather food with equal skill. Accordingly, they were equal socially, intellectually, and in terms of power. But when the plow came, the work that women did became less relevant, and the remaining work was left to the physically stronger sex---by nature's course, this was usually the male. All successful economic activity became dependent on the successful economic performance of the male.

These economic structures and the social structures that came with them made it such that women and children were dependent on the man; even if women had issues with the relationship or their treatment, they had little recourse from the crappy relationship, because they were economically dependent on men (to provide their shelter, food, and clothing).

Within these structures, women served their own socio-economic purpose: they kept stuff in order at home, making sure the family was tight-knit; the children and the father always had someone to take care of them, and accordingly, all the members of the family were dependent on one another in some way (i.e. a tight-knit social structure), while the economic underpinning of it all was the man's economic productivity. Friedan argues that women wound up finding personal identity and meaning through their family, rather than through their own virtues. (This is a huge blanket statement, of course. And different societies value women’s economic contributions in different ways, but I don’t think there‘s a single culture that does it enough.)

Of course， this was reinforced---if not entirely driven， after a while---by social structures that supported male-dominated households and frowned upon (a) women working and being economically empowered and independent and (b) women disrupting otherwise stable, peaceful families and societies. When my grandmother started working at a municipal office in 1940s Bombay for the very reason of economic independence, for example， her whole family disdained her activities; she was needlessly challenging stable, peaceful norms.

But in the last century especially, women have been able to demonstrate their individual economic worth outside of the home as well---demonstrate to their families, societies, and selves. Whether this had to do with the changing nature of work and economic activity (less manual labor-based) or the needs of the economy (i.e. World War II required women to work on bomber assembly lines in the US), women demonstrated that work outside the home was doable and beneficial to society in some respect. This has probably changed even more from the move from an industrial economy to a service economy，where economic contributions are less contingent on physical strength or prowess。 （That said，large elements of industrial manufacturing have required the massive contributions of women， and in places like 19th century America， today’s factories in China and Bangladesh, and elsewhere, women have accounted for at least half of manufacturing jobs, going so far as to dominate certain sectors in the industry. This is something I'll try and explore after my trip, in a few weeks, to Shenzhen, China's manufacturing hub).

This economic activity (and empowerment) also challenged conventional power structures: being (more) financially independent, the woman didn't have to kowtow to whatever the husband said; she had alternative recourse should she seek it. So, if a woman wanted a divorce, it was more viable. If the woman didn't want to just look after the kids, this was also viable: she could leave and support herself economically.

This relatively sudden empowerment has broken traditionally peaceful, stable socio-economic structures; because of the former (divorce being more viable), marriages are arguably more precarious; because of the latter (looking after the kids exclusively is more of an 'option'), the tight-knittedness of the family has eroded. I recently read a piece about how people that oppose same-sex marriage are often the same people that oppose any challenges to “traditional” marriages in which a man has his defined role and a woman hers.

Because the structures of society were changing, the ideologies of society changed along with them---Though this was arguably a reciprocal process in which each drove the other. With more women realizing their potential, their own expectations for themselves were elevated, and as they accomplished them, society's expectations for women were also elevated. Accordingly, the ideology of feminism---of the equality of worth of a woman and man---as well as recognition of its merit---that there are many benefits to this equality---came about. And that's somewhere near where we find ourselves in many parts (but not enough) of the world today.

(This rant is getting unwieldy, so I'll break it into two posts)