This paper examines gender inequality in the context of structural transformation and rebalancing in China. We document declining women's relative wages and labor force participation in China during the last two decades, despite rapid growth and expansion of the service sector. Using household data, we provide evidence consistent with a U-shaped relationship between economic development and women's labor market outcomes. Using a model of structural transformation, we show that labor market barriers for women have increased over time. Model counterfactuals suggest that removing these barriers and increasing service sector productivity can boost both gender equality and economic growth in China.

China's countryside is being transformed by rapid, far-reaching development. This wide-reaching and multidisciplinary book questions whether gender politics are changing in response to this development, and explores how gender politics inform and are reproduced or reconfigured in the languages, knowledge, processes and practices of development in rural China. The contributors - prominent scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, gender, development and Chinese studies - argue that although gender has been elided in recent development policies, women have been singled out as a 'vulnerable group' requiring protection, instruction and 'empowerment' from paternalistic state and NGOs. Nevertheless, development has facilitated the dissemination of gender equality as an ideal and institutional norm, increased the channels through which women can advance claims for equal rights, and expanded the possibilities for agency available to them. Drawing on extensive field research in sites across China, from remote communities in Inner Mongolia and Guizhou to the fringes of expanding cities, the contributors illustrate how different women are bringing their own aspirations for development to bear in the momentous changes occurring in rural China. This compelling and thought-provoking book will be of interest to scholars, students and researchers in the fields of public and social policy, sociology, political economy, anthropology, gender and development.

Contributed papers presented earlier at a conference.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has made advances in narrowing gender gaps in its labor market. It has one of the highest female labor force participation rates in Asia and the Pacific at around 64% in 2013, and one of the narrowest earnings gender gaps. This study investigates how women are faring in the transition to the PRC's new growth model, and what can be done to promote women's participation. It shows how the PRC is undergoing multiple transitions that have implications for gender equality and work. For example, during the market transition, gender wage gaps and gender wage discrimination increased, reaching 33% in urban areas and 44% in rural areas. Find out how evidenced-based gender analysis can foster gender responsive policy approaches to promote women's equality in the labor market.

One of the widely acknowledged consequences of the economic reforms in China over the past four decades has been widened social-gender gap and hence increased gender inequalities. In recent years, there is a rising concern of inequality in China and a mounting intellectual reflection and critique of the growth-focused development path China has followed so far. This collection can be seen as a part of this critique, but the focus is on gender and various forms of inequality pertaining to gender and gender relations. The book shows how various gender inequality issues are approached and analysed in the location of China by Chinese gender/social science scholars and how studies of gender inequality constitutes an astute critique of the neo-liberal capitalist development in China. The book brings forth a distinctive gender perspective to the Chinese intellectual and political analysis of social inequality and a Chinese perspective to the bulks of international scholarship on gender inequality in China.