1st Edition

Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia

Edited By Esther Ngan-ling Chow Copyright 2002
    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia brings together a collection of original essays from top scholars in the United States and Asia to explore the centrality of gender in the process of economic development in East Asia. Contributors demonstrate through ethnography, personal narratives, field observation, and in-depth interviews the essential parts women have played in the national growth, economic restructuring, and industrialization of East Asian countries, including South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China.

    Preface,Acknowledgements,Introduction, Esther Ngan-ling Chow,Part I: EnGendering East Asian Development,Chapter 1: Globalization, East Asian Development, and Gender: A Historical Overview, Esther Ngan-ling Chow,Chapter 2: Studying Gender and Development with Gender Perspectives: From Mainstream Theories to Alternative Frameworks, Esther Ngan-ling Chow and Deanna M. Lyter,Part II: The Process of Industrialization: Institutional Embeddedness, Control, and Resistance,Chapter 3: Women and Work in East Asia, Yin-wah Chu,Chapter 4: Gendered Organizations, Embodiment, and Employment among Manufacturing Workers in Taiwan, Esther Ngan-ling Chow and Ray-May Hsung,Chapter 5: Power, Media Representation, and Labor Dispute: The Case of Women Workers in South Korea, Hyun Mee Kim,Part III: The Impact of Economic Restructuring on Employment and Family,Chapter 6: Women's Unemployment, Re-employment and Self-employment in China's Economic Restructuring, Ting Gong,Chapter 7: State Women Workers in Chinese Economic Reform: The Transformation of Management Control and Firm Independence, Ping Ping,Chapter 8: Gender Embeddedness of Family Strategies: Hong Kong Working-class Families Under Economic Restructuring, Vivian Hiu-tung Leung,Part IV: Migration, Household, and Gender Strategies,Chapter 9: Guests From the Tropics: Labor Practices and Foreign Workers in Taiwan, Anru Lee,Chapter 10: Fleeing Poverty: Rural Women, Expanding Marriage Markets, and Strategies for Social Mobility in Contemporary China, Christina Gilmartin and Lin Tan,Chapter 11: Women's Work in International Migration, Janet W. Salaff,Bibliography,About the Contributors,Index

    Biography

    Esther Ngan-ling Chow is Professor of Sociology at American University in Washington D.C. and has served as an adjunct faculty member in the Center for Asian Studies, and is affiliated with the Women's and Gender Studies programs.

    "An invaluable addition to development studies, this book analyzes East Asian industrialization, restructuring, and migration with indigenous gender perspectives. Its articles offer incisive feminist critiques of the differential effects on women and men of the Asian economic miracle." -- Judith Lorber, author of Gender Inequalities: Feminist Theories and Politics
    "This collection makes gender visible as it runs through the processes of globalization, economic restructuring, and labor migration in Asia which are transforming this part of the globe. Rather than static stereotypes of Asia or of men and women, the dynamic and interacting forces of gender and economic growth stand out in these accounts." -- Myra Marx Ferree, co-author of Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement Across Four Decades of Change
    "Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia is a coherent and theoretically informed collection of studies of gendering processes integral to industrialization, restructuring, and migration in East Asia. This book is a valuable contribution to our understanding." -- Joan Acker, author of Doing Comparable Worth: Gender, Class, and Pay Equity
    "This important book illustrates the centrality of women's participation and development in those East Asian nations that have experienced rapid economic growth in the last thirty years...Chow's multidisciplinary approach deserves a wide audience." -- Christine E. Bose, co-editor of Women in the Latin American Development Process
    "A much-needed introductory text which demonstrates the importance of gender analysis in any explanation of East Asian economic success. This will be an extremely useful book for teaching development or East Asian studies." -- Diane L. Wolf, author of Factory Daughters: Gender, Household Dynamics, and Rural Industrialization in Java
    "This useful collection of papers sets out to combine empirical studies of East Asian development with a theoretical interrogation of those development theories that are neglectful of, or even blind to, the pervasiveness and pertinence of gender." -- Contemporary Sociology