Jiping Zuo’s new book assesses market-reform impacts on women in China.
The professor of sociology uncovers the revival of traditional gendered family roles among urban women and men as one of their strategies to resist market brutality, as one of their struggles to balance work and family.
Published in October by Palgrave Macmillan, “Work and Family in Urban China: Women’s Changing Experience since Mao” examines a three-way interaction among market, state, and family in the wake of China’s recent market reforms.
Since 1978, China has seen waves of reform to its collectivist economy. The shift to “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has included, among many changes, privatization, fewer and lower subsidies and less social welfare.
The 215-page book relies on interviews with 165 urban women, from three cohorts, during the period 2000-08.
Her research interests are in social construction of family roles, marital inequality, and state-family relations in contemporary China.
Her recent publications can be found in “Journal of Marriage and Family,” “Journal of Family Issues,” “Rural Sociology,” “Critical Sociology” and “Science & Society.”
Among other courses, she teaches SOC 160 Principles of Sociology, SOC 276 Families and Globalization and SOC 574 Culture and Family.
