This dissertation compares and explains the gender division of household labor in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. I employed two sources of survey data, the 1997 East Asia Social Survey and the 2002 Family and Changing Gender Roles III of the International Social Survey Program. In addition, I conducted in-depth interviews with married men and women from the four countries.

Gendered Trajectories explores why industrial societies vary in the pace at which they reduce gender inequality and compares changes in women's employment opportunities in Japan and Taiwan over the last half-century. Japan has undergone much less improvement in women's economic status than Taiwan, despite its more advanced economy and greater welfare provisions. The difference is particularly puzzling because the two countries share many institutional practices and values. Drawing on historical trends, survey statistics, and personal interviews with people in both countries, Yu shows how country-specific organizational arrangements and industrial policies affect women's employment. In particular, the conditions faced by Japanese and Taiwanese women in the workplace have a profound effect on their labor force participation at critical points in their lives. Women's lifetime employment decisions in turn shape the divergent trajectories in gender equality. Few studies documenting the development of women's economic lives are based on non-Western societies and even fewer adopt a comparative perspective. This perceptive work demonstrates and underscores the importance of understanding gender inequality as a long-term, dynamic social process.

Abstract: China has undergone tremendous social changes in gender roles in the past decades. According to census data, China's employment rate for working-age women not only fell from 77.4 percent in 1990 to a new low of 60.8 percent in 2010, it was also 20.3 percentage points lower than that of men in 2010. Similarly, a 2010 survey by the All-China Women's Federation and National Bureau of Statistics shows that the proportion of Chinese men and women believing that "men belong in public, women belong at home" has increased over the past decade. One unaddressed question is whether these changes are reflected in the gender division of household labor in urban China. Using data from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey, I examine differences in wives and husbands' total housework time and time spent on specific household tasks among cohorts from three different reform periods. The analysis compares housework participation among 402 couples in the Cultural-Revolution cohort, 430 couples in the Gradualist-Reform cohort and 107 couples in the Radical-Reform cohort. Husbands in the Cultural-Revolution cohort spend more time on housework than the two reform cohorts. There are no cohort differences among wives and the gender gap in housework time is only significant in the task of food buying and clothes washing, but not in the total housework time. The adoption of a less equal gender ideology might be driving husbands' decreasing housework participation in the reform cohorts.

This book delivers timely research on the various interfaces of family and work, and their impacts on individual wellbeing in East and Southeast Asia. It highlights changing family structures and processes, with special attention to inter-generational relationships, gender roles, cultural norms and employment. The book presents both qualitative and quantitative research works, adopting a comparative approach to analyze a number of demographics. In-depth field studies are also included, which present in detail the daily efforts of certain populations to attain better living standards by mobilizing available resources from within and outside the family. As such, the book is a valuable addition to contemporary research perspectives on family, work and living conditions in Asia.

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.

How do Chinese, Japanese and Korean mothers in Britain make sense of their motherhood and employment? What are the intersecting factors that shape these women’s identities, experiences and stories? Contributing further to the continuing discourse and development of intersectionality, this book examines East Asian migrant women’s stories of motherhood, employment and gender relations by deploying interlocking categories that go beyond the meta axes of race, gender and class, including factors such as husbands’ ethnicities and the locality of their settlement. Through this, Lim argues for more detailed and context specific analytical categories of intersectionality, enabling a more nuanced understanding of migrant women’s stories and identities. East Asian Mothers in Britain will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines and with an interest in identity, gender, ethnicity, class, migration and intersectionality.

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.