ruralwomensmicrorealitiestwocases.docVIP

Rural Women’s Micro Realities: Two Cases By Lanyan Chen ? 4 Changing rural landscape A larger proportion of Chinese women workers (60.1 percent) compared to male workers are found in the agricultural labor force.1 Women often worked on land without entitlements and amidst the rising “three problems” in the countryside, resulting in reduced benefits from the country’s overall economic growth. The “three rural problems” are: decline in farmers’ income and social security; obsolete agricultural production systems which are inept in the face of world competition; and an urban biased economic orientation in government policies (Chen 2008). The inadequate incomes and living standards of rural households are the primary problems while the restructuring and policies to bolster agriculture and to promote rural development in socially equitable and economically sustainable ways are the means that had been identified by the state to address these problems. In recent years, rural households that have traditionally engaged in diversified multi-crop farming for both consumption and selling, have shifted to the intensive production of a single tradable crop. These households involved in “specialized” farming have also started to informally cooperate or put up shareholding companies, in order to meet market demands from inside and outside of China. Such emergent practices have enabled households to break through the limits of small-scale, householdbased farming practices. In some instances, there has been cooperation between households with technical expertise and those with land but without expertise or labor. Such cooperation allows farm households to reach a higher scale of production thereby increasing incomes, as well as to reduce costs and risks associated with market access. They have the potential to increase rural jobs and yield additional income from land lease and new business opportunities. Mushrooming all over the countryside are cooperative organizations that are volu