Leaving Home and Coming Back: Experiences of Rural Migrant Women TAN Shen <A>China Has a Huge Group of Migrant Women Beginning in the mid 1980s, young people from China's rural villages started migrating to cities and industrially developed regions. During the 1980s there were approximately several million of them, and by the 1990s their numbers had grown to several tens of millions. In 2000 a survey by China's Ministry of Labor and Social Guarantees put the number at 80 million. Within the large group of migrants from rural villages, approximately one third are women, numbering around 26 million total. They come primarily from undeveloped inland provinces and poor rural villages. Most of them seek employment opportunities in cities and towns within their own province, but 20 to 40 percent of the women leave their province and go to cities or industrially developed regions along the east coast.<<1>> In contrast to men who leave rural villages, approximately one third of the women leaving home are unmarried, while for men the percentage is nearly half. When women leave their home province, their destinations tend to be places with high concentrations of other migrants. Half of them go to the export processing centers of Guangdong Province, primarily the Pearl River delta region. One quarter of them go to coastal cities, and the distribution in other regions is relatively sparse. Men, however, tend to be more spread out in their distribution. The reason may be related to work opportunities. The primary jobs for migrant women are as workers in processing industries, as hired labor in the
service sector, including in restaurants, retail stores, and hotels; and as domestic help. These jobs are mainly concentrated in industrial regions and large cities. The jobs taken by men tend to be in construction and shipping, and thus their distribution is more scattered. However, among migrants there is a tendency towards family migration. Some data show that 40 percent of migrants run their own businesses. It is estimated that most of these are husband and wife operations, which are spread throughout cities and towns,<<2>> and this may be the reason that the disparity in the proportion of male to female migrants is not wider. The large number of rural women leaving home to find work has become a social phenomenon that is attracting attention. What does it mean for the women themselves? What does it mean for society? People are paying attention to and interpreting these questions from different perspectives. The author of this paper began studying migrant women as a specific group eight years ago. My primary area of concern is the influence of women's migration on gender structures during this specific period of China's history. In eight years my partners and I have conducted a number of surveys in the primary destinations for migrant women--the Pearl River delta region in Guangdong Province and some regions in Sichuan Province and Hunan Province. I primarily study women workers in the processing factories, and at the same time I organize research teams of colleagues to study two other important occupations held by migrant women from rural villages--as domestic hired labor (nannies) and in the sex trade.<<3>> The focus of the discussion in this paper is not theoretical. Rather the paper offers a description of typical situations for rural migrant women, followed by discussion of
some of the controversial topics that have attracted attention in recent years. In my descriptions I have strived to interpret the issues raised using the perspective of social gender consciousness. <A>Leaving Home and Coming Back <B>1. Why leave home? This topic was discussed quite a bit during the 1990s, but I believe there are two issues here: first, researchers usually interpret people's motives, including women's motives for leaving home from an economic perspective, while ignoring the social reasons. Second, there has been too much emphasis placed on the traditional influence of the Chinese family. For example, it is believed that decisions about whether or not to leave home, and who should leave home, are decided entirely by "family strategy," and further analysis is not done regarding the different roles and attitudes within the family and the personal opinions of the ones leaving home. It can be seen from our surveys and from those done by others that when people are asked why they left home, the main reasons given are "to earn money," and "to help the family get out of poverty." Ranking just behind these are "to see the world," and "to seek opportunities for development," and other noneconomic, personal motivations. It is said that men's "self development" is consistent with the goals of the family, because traditionally, at some point they continue the family's name. For a woman, however, the situation is different. If she is married, her personal development conflicts with the role and responsibilities traditionally assigned to her by marriage. If she is unmarried, she is in
a transitional role in her parents' home, and her responsibilities differ depending on the family's circumstances. If she is an older daughter and the other sisters are still young, and furthermore the family's economic situation is not good, she faces a heavy responsibility in helping her parents support the family until she marries. If she does not need to take on such a heavy burden at home, then she has a greater degree of freedom. Surveys show that decisions to leave home are rarely made by the head of household or as a result of family negotiations. Most women make the decision on their own and then seek the consent of their parents or husbands. Some women leave home without the consent of their parents, and still others leave home "to escape family strife," which certainly cannot be considered to be a "family strategy." My conclusion is that the large number of rural women leaving home to look for work is not entirely caused by industrialization and urbanization. For one thing, this phenomenon represents a breakdown of the old system. In China's history there was a considerable period of time during which cities and rural villages were isolated from each other. National systems and policies severely limited the free mobility of rural people. During that time, rural people who wanted to use work to change their status or position had very few possibilities open to them, and most of the opportunities were given to men. Women could only change their circumstances by the even more limited opportunities offered through marriage. Since the reforms and opening to the outside, leaving home to find work has provided rural people with a variety of choices and possibilities. However, the social system changes slowly, and this presents those who leave home with a series of difficulties in later in life, particularly in regard to planning for the future.
Second, the combined effects of traditional Chinese culture and socialist ideology meant that a mechanism of severe repression towards women did not exist in rural households. Since the reforms, family relationships and power have shifted towards the axis of husbands and wives and the younger generation, giving young married women more autonomy. Migration also promotes the legal and reasonable growth of individualism. This is manifested most clearly in the case of unmarried women. However, in marriage, the traditional structure of "the man decides and the woman follows" has remained basically unchanged, and women who have developed their individuality, especially those who have achieved a certain amount of accomplishment in work, face more conflicts in their families than do men. <B>2. The changes brought about by leaving home to find work Once migrants leave home and arrive at their destination, they immediately enter a labor market that is divided in two ways. First, the labor market is divided between locals and outsiders. The jobs open to outsiders are the physically demanding, low-wage jobs that the locals are unwilling to do. Second, the labor market is divided on the basis of gender. Employment advertisements clearly state gender requirements. In the Pearl River delta region where I conducted surveys, many employment advertisements posted on the streets and on factory gates read: "Seeking skilled female workers." There, it is easier for young women, especially women with a certain amount of work experience to find jobs than it is for men. However, when comparing men and women in terms of position and wages, one discovers that in general men's incomes are higher than women's. Within the same factory, the higher the position, the fewer women there are. In other
words, the kind of unskilled, labor-intensive work that is easy for women to find is monotonous, strictly managed, and poorly paid. If a woman wants to earn a certain income, she must work even harder. Women working on factory assembly lines have working hours that frequently stretch ten hours or more. When there is a rush to fill an order, it is common for women to work more than ten hours straight or all night long on overtime. Stressful work over long periods of time, combined with poor nutrition leads many women workers to experience fainting on the job. When facing this harsh market, women outsiders initially experience tremendous psychological pressures, and feelings of being adrift and missing home are intense. Some women who are psychologically more fragile find it difficult to cope with the frustrations. In many places we visited we heard about incidents of migrant women committing suicide. Although there are no statistics, we believe that suicide rates for migrant women must be higher than for the general population. Except for a minority that returns home, however, most women stay. They slowly adjust to life away from home and they learn methods of coping and resistance, such as expanding their social networks and switching jobs frequently. As they become more skilled, their incomes gradually rise and become more stable, which bolsters their selfconfidence. Some women with stronger aspirations for development begin to take training courses in the hopes of finding new opportunities. <B>3. The significance of marriage If an unmarried woman of eighteen leaves home, after two or three years she starts to think about getting married. For rural young men and women alike, leaving
home raises their expectations with regard to love and marriage. Love and marriage are another career for them, in addition to work,. The cultural environment of migrant life that is so clearly different from that of the village causes young people who leave home to have concepts of love and marriage that are vastly different from those of the older generation. We have attempted to divide women who leave home into three [sic] categories based on their experience of emotions and marriage. The first category is the stable (steady?) type, which represents the majority. Their love interest is someone from their hometown, and both the man and the women, as well as their parents, accept their selection easily. This type faces virtually no obstacles. In comparison with villagers who did not leave home, these women have more opportunities to establish emotions, both towards their parents and towards their lover (husband). They are more autonomous and receive more respect. However, the situation with men who have left home is not the same. In addition to the common condition both men and women place on a potential mate, which is "to know the other's background thoroughly," women who have left home have the further requirement that their mate must also have left home. "She doesn't want a country bumpkin." Men who have left home do not have this requirement for women. In other words, women who have had the experience of leaving home demand that their spouses must be equal to them. The second category is the troubled type. This category is quite large. When we talked with women who had left home, we discovered that their most common problem was with love and marriage. They do not know how to handle the conflict between their ideals and reality. Many of their problems stem from the fact that their lovers are from other places. Although emotionally things are fine, the practical difficulties are hard to
overcome, and their parents usually do not support them. In this type of situation many people have no choice but to give up the relationship. Those in better shape economically establish families in the places where they migrated for work. For a certain amount of time this does not pose a problem, but eventually they will again face the question of "where to settle." In recent years the phenomenon of women migrants getting married away from home has attracted a lot of attention. These women do not constitute a large proportion of women who have left home, but their total number is significant. The local population in the migrant's destination views young women from the outside as having a large impact on the local marriage market. In some villages in the Pearl River delta they say that among the newly married in recent years, one third of marriages involve one party from outside, and most of these are women marrying local men. The women who attract the attention of the local men are usually above average and are considered to be "the lucky ones." However, their background as outsiders usually exposes them to discrimination and misunderstanding. The third category is the marginal type. Some women experience emotional frustration or find it difficult to find an ideal mate, and their youth slips away, leaving them rural spinsters. This category of women appears everywhere, and they are marginalized spiritually and in terms of their social position. They have a bigger problem than their counterparts from the cities, because they cannot return to their home villages and they do not have a stable position in the city. This is an unhappy group of wanderers. The fourth category is the deviant type. Places where migrants gather are usually places with a greater incidence of sexual problems. The victims in nonmarital sexual
relationships are nearly all women. They may become pregnant and have miscarriages. In many hospitals in places with high populations of migrants, women from other places account for a large proportion of abortions. Even when these consequences do not occur, nonmarital sexual relationships are the greatest obstacle to future marriage for these women. She must try to hide her past or find a husband who understands--and this is very difficult. In summary, the social culture still considers these women to be "shameful," and women have no choice but to bear these unfair pressures on their own. It can be seen from the difficulties migrant women encounter with sex, love, and marriage that a migrant woman's work, life and psychological history are closely connected to her life cycle. For men this is not as apparent. Moreover, regardless of which category a woman falls under, she is always at a disadvantage. Leaving home raises women's economic status but it does not change the marriage structure and patterns of "men being superior to women," and "the man decides and the woman follows." In these structures and patterns, even if the men regard the selection of a mate and marriage as important life events, the woman's situation has basically little impact on his social status and personal development. By contrast, the more developed he is as a person and the higher his status, the more autonomy he has in selecting a mate and in marriage. For women this is not the case, as an increase in her personal status actually shrinks the range of mates available to her. This is because the man's situation usually defines the upper limit for a woman's development--if the wife's status and development exceed her husband's, the result may be instability in the marriage. Thus, for women, the issue of marriage is not merely one of emotions and lifestyle, but a fundamental question that determines her prospects for development.
<B>4. Returning home? The so-called "migrant population" refers to people who leave their place of residence and temporarily work or live in another place. Due to the distribution of China's material resources and social resources on the basis of region and sector, as "outsiders," the migrant population does not have the right of permanent legal residence and does not enjoy any welfare benefits in their new destinations. Workers who leave rural villages are all migrants, and during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the migration of rural villagers began to take place on a large scale, migrants were aggressively excluded everywhere. Later, migration came to be accepted as a fact, but the assumption in society was that once rural migrants had earned enough money, they would go home. After more than ten years, things have not turned out the way people assumed. According to surveys, the proportion of those returning to their home villages after leaving accounts for only a few percent of all migrants. Approximately 20 to 30 percent of migrants return to a neighboring city or town. We will refer to both of these as "returnees." What do people who have left think about going home? In our surveys we found three categories of returnees. One type was the failures. They returned home after encountering frustrations on the outside. Generally speaking, they do not leave again. Another type accumulated a certain amount of funds working outside. They are usually husband and wife teams who run a business or other operation together. The third type returns home out of necessity, such as childbirth, a shortage of labor at home, or a child who needs care. Most of the returnees in the third situation are women. What surprised us about the results of our surveys was that these women were
not willing to stay at home permanently. At least half of them stated firmly that they would leave home again. The reasons they gave are: they are no longer accustomed to rural life and its conditions, caring for the family is very annoying, the family needs money, etc. The government and society have already recognized that it is impossible for all rural people who leave home to go back. The government is currently preparing to offer household registrations in small cities and towns so that a large number of people can set up residence there. Among the topics discussed in this paper, we are concerned about what changes or differences there are between those who return home to their villages and those who settle in the small cities where they find work as compared to families who stay in the village. This is a question we will be observing in the future. <A>Some hot-button issues <B>1. The rights and interests of migrant women workers Rural women who take jobs in factories in their chosen destinations are called "outside women workers." In the export processing enterprises throughout the Pearl River delta outside women workers account for over 70 percent of the total number of workers, and on assembly lines more than 90 percent of the workers are migrant women. It can be said that in the regions of China where the export-oriented economy is most developed, migrant rural women workers make up the main labor force. They number at least 6 million.
China's labor laws and the local labor statutes in Guangdong clearly regulate labor contracts, working hours, labor protection, minimum wage, and social insurance, but according to ours and other surveys, the rights and interests of migrant women workers are frequently violated. We believe the most serious problems are: 1. occupational safety and health. In July 2000 the State Economic and Trade Commission reported to the State Council on the situation of safety in production nationwide, stating the opinion that the highest occurrence of accidents was in villages and towns, privately-operated, individual enterprises and "three types of processing plus compensation" enterprises, and that most of the deaths and injuries were among agricultural workers and migrant workers.<<4>> According to partial statistics from the city of Shenzhen, at least 12,000 industrial accidents occur each year, and over 80 people die.<<5>> Occupational diseases are another important detrimental factor in the lives and health of workers. A survey by the Ministry of Health showed that varying degrees of occupational hazards existed in over 82 percent of village and town industrial enterprises; nearly 30 percent of workers were engaged in toxic and dangerous occupations, and that more than 10 percent of workers were suspected to be suffering from occupational disease.<<6>> Toxic and dangerous occupations exist in 40 percent of the industrial enterprises in Shenzhen, affecting more than half of the workers.<<7>> In 1994 we conducted surveys of migrant workers in six cities in the Pearl River delta and found that one third of the migrant workers believed that the noise, dust, and toxic fumes in the workshops were serious. 2. Overly long working hours. As mentioned earlier in this paper, labor that exceeds a worker's strength damages the worker's health. Women workers frequently experience disruption of their menstrual periods and fainting. It is also not unheard of for workers to die suddenly on
the job. 3. Problems with wages and fees. Our survey from 1994 showed that the monthly income for migrant workers was less than half that of local employees, and migrant workers do not enjoy the benefits beyond the nominal wages as do local workers. In addition, there are various fees that are collected from them because of their status as migrants. For the more than two thirds of them living in extreme poverty, these fees take up half their wages.<<8>> In recent years, the incomes of locals in the Pearl River delta have risen tremendously, but there has been no apparent increase in wages for migrant workers. In addition, the problems of businesses being in arrears paying wages and embezzling from workers' wages appear to be intractable. Since China's establishment of an arbitration system for labor disputes, these types of cases have been the most numerous. In addition, local governments and agencies collect fees and penalties under all kinds of pretexts. Migrant workers often say, "It's difficult to find money away from home." Now that these problems have been exposed by the media and reported on by researchers, the government and society have become widely aware of them. In 1996 many locations began to implement a minimum wage system. Recently, the State Planning Commission made the decision to cancel seven types of fees collected from migrant workers in different locations.<<9>> <B>2. The problem of sexual harassment In our surveys we found that sexual harassment towards young migrant women could come in the form of physical harassment by a boss or manager. One respondent wrote on her survey, "Women workers who have been targeted by the boss can't get
away." This type of harassment based on power is almost the same as the harassment experienced by white-collar women. Most of the harassment, however, is verbal, and it comes from managers and local young men in the workplace. This type of verbal harassment is frequently humiliating in nature. Chinese researcher Ms Tang Can believes that when analyzing the sexual harassment received by migrant women, the harassment can be broken down into levels that correspond closely to the status and position of the victim of the harassment. Due to their status as "outsiders" and as "peasants," migrant women are considered to be the lowest group of people and easy targets for bullying. Thus, the harassment directed towards them is more savage and destructive.<<10>> <B>3. The problems of women engaged in the sex trade With an increasingly mobile population and economic development, the sex entertainment and sexual services industries have grown rapidly in mainland China in recent years. These industries are found throughout cities and towns on the coast and inland. At the same time, a large number of service "girls" engaged in this industry have appeared. Most of these girls are migrants from rural villages. This issue has caused tremendous controversy. The official mainstream opinion is that this is an ugly social phenomenon that corrupts social decency and causes the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and it should be strictly prohibited. Some scholars believe that prohibiting it will not make it stop, and that it would be better to legalize it in a limited way in order to control it. Some officials in local governments believe that the existence of this industry benefits the local investment environment. The common theme in these opinions is their attention to the social effects of the existence of the sex trade, but very little attention
paid to the problems of the "girls"--the women who do the work. Why do they enter such a disreputable occupation? What impact will engaging in this occupation have on their lives in the future? The research of the renowned Chinese sexual sociologist Professor Pan Suiming is different from that of others. He has conducted long-term observations and interviews with women engaged in the sex trade and their associates, and he concludes that "the girls and the madams (the girls' managers, although there is no relationship of personal dependence between them--author's note) are also migrant workers." Like their sisters who have left home to find work, they are regular people. Professor Pan has described in detail their working lives and personal lives as regular people, and he points out, "they are at the lowest level of our society, the weakest and most hopeless people," and they should at least obtain equality and assistance.<<11>> As women's scholar, I feel the same way myself. However, I would also ask, what reasons cause them to become "the lowest level, the weakest and most hopeless" people? Perhaps we should look at two aspects of the problem, one being the exclusion of these women by the ideology and systems of mainstream culture--mainly when they are "working." The other aspect is the exclusion of these women by male ideology and the male-dominated system of marriage once they leave the profession and want to marry. What kind of gender relationships and structures does this kind of dual exclusion reflect? The girls understand the consequences of engaging in this kind of work, so what is their attitude towards it? How do they plan for the future, and how do they cope with the many disadvantages? Currently, there are many limitations to conducting this kind of research, and for the time being we can only wonder about it.
<B>4. The problem of educating the children of migrants As rural migrant workers begin to live for longer periods of time in cities, the questions about how to deal with their children become more apparent. The main problem is the issue of education. The current "Compulsory Education Law" states, "the implementation of compulsory education is the responsibility of local government, with management on different levels." Local governments in places where migrants work do not shoulder the fiscal burden of paying the costs of educating the children of migrants. Although some public schools allow the children of migrants to attend, the high tuition is difficult for low-income migrant workers to afford. In this situation, a new market-- "schools for migrant children"--has sprung up. Researchers in Beijing have visited 100 of these schools, and it is said that there may actually be more than 300. These schools are illegal, and may be disbanded at any time.<<12>> From what we have learned, of the more than two million migrants in Beijing, one hundred thousand of them are children between the ages of six and fourteen. Except for a small portion of them who can attend local schools on a temporary basis, at least twenty thousand of them go to schools for migrant children, and the remaining large numbers of children are usually deprived of an education. Individual surveys have discovered that many children help their parents make a living in Beijing, especially girls. When a reporter interviewed the father of an eleven year old girl and asked him why he didn't let his daughter go to school, the father's response was: "It's no use for girls to go to school, because when we go back home in the future they're just going to get married." According to sampling surveys of the urban migrant population, there are approximately
two million school age migrant children throughout the country.<<13>> The problems in Beijing exist everywhere in the country, and this has become a major issue for researchers and the media. Author's bio: Tan Shen, female, is senior editor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Sociology journal Sociological Research. She serves concurrently on the Standing Board of Directors of the China Women's Seminar and is responsible for the "Labor Project" at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Tsinghua University. Her primary research projects include: "Rural Migrant Working Women" through the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Sociology, research with the Ford Foundation concerning rural migrant working women and supporting projects, the "Labor Studies Series" through the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at Tsinghua University, the survey "Groups of Rural People with the Experience of Leaving Home," a sub-project of "Second National Survey on the Social Status of Women," a cooperative project by the National Women's Alliance and State Bureau of Statistics. <<1>>Tan Shen: "Gender Differences in Rural Labor Migration", Beijing: Sociological Research, 1997, Vol. 1; the State Ministry of Labor and Social Guarantees, Office of Training and Employment: "The Employment Situation and Forecast for Rural Labor Migration," Beijing: materials from the "International Forum on Rural Labor Migration," 2001.
<<2>>Hu Ying: "New Features of China's Rural Migrant Population in 2000," China Statistics Information Network, 2001. <<3>>Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Sociology "Study on Rural Women Who Leave Home for Work" project team: Peasant Migration and Gender, Zhengzhou: Zhongyuan Nongmin Press, 2000. Most of the material in the paper came from surveys conducted by our project team. <<4>>Liu Yu: "Safe Production Calls for Comprehensive Management Statutes," Beijing: Rule of Law Daily, July 24, 2000. <<5>>Sun Fuhai: "Some Migrant Workers in Shenzhen Fear for Their Safety on the Job; Last Year More Than 10,000 Were Injured or Disabled and over 80 Died," Beijing: Workers Daily, March 31, 1999. <<6>>Feng Lei, et al.: "Occupational Hazards Exist in 83 percent of Enterprises in Rural Towns, and the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Will Accelerate Deliberation on the 'Draft of an Occupational Disease Prevention Law,'" Guangzhou: Nanfang Dushi News, September 6, 2001. <<7>>See note 5. <<8>>"One Report from the Pearl River Delta," in Peasant Migration and Gender.
<<9>>"The State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance Announce the Cancellation of Seven Major Fees for Migrant Workers," Beijing: People's Daily, November 15, 2001. <<10>>"The Problem of Sexual Harassment," in Peasant Migration and Gender. Press, 2000. <<11>>Pan Suiming: Survival and Experience, Beijing: China Social Sciences <<12>>Zhang Yongqiang: "The Difficulty of Attending School for Migrant Children," Beijing: Rule of Law Daily, August 14, 2000. <<13>>Shen Yan: "Hoping That 'Migrant Schools' Will Not Migrate Again,'" Beijing; People's Daily, August 30, 2000.