Chinese Women in the Official Chinese Press: Discursive Constructions of Gender in Service to the State

Abstract

Theories of gender and the nation posit that women are prescribed certain roles according to the needs of the state at a particular historical moment and that such roles are frequently articulated in media discourses. In China, the government has a long-standing tradition of using the state-run media to convey a national vision and mould its citizens. Hence, the mediated representation of Chinese women has ebbed and flowed according to radical shifts in government policy and ideology. In recent decades, massive economic and social changes have necessitated a quest for legitimacy on the part of the government through a vast reorganization of the country's ideological environment, including the official construction of gender. This paper discusses three discursive representations of women currently articulated in state-run Chinese newspapers -worker, housewife, and consumer -and examines how the government press emphasizes the equality of Chinese women while simultaneously positioning them as inferior to men.

How policy positions women entrepreneurs: A comparative analysis of state discourse in Sweden and the United States

“…Scholars have, for example, analyzed media (Achtenhagen and Welter, 2011;Iyer, 2009;Wallis, 2006), business periodicals (Gill, 2013), popular narratives (Smith, 2010;Smith and Anderson, 2004), teaching material (Ahl, 2007b;Jones, 2011) and entrepreneurship research (Ahl, 2004;Bruni et al, 2004). All results point to the male gendering of entrepreneurship and the stereotyping and second-ordering of women.…”

Return migration, online entrepreneurship and gender performance in the Chinese ‘Taobao families’

“…Since the reform era, women's domestic‐oriented roles as virtuous wives and dutiful mothers have been portrayed and widely represented in the official press and commercial magazines (Wallis, 2006:98). This is an indication that ‘ the inner sphere was re‐celebrated as women's natural domain ’ (Evans, 2008:104).…”

“…This is an indication that ‘ the inner sphere was re‐celebrated as women's natural domain ’ (Evans, 2008:104). This development can be explained by the Party‐state's withdrawal from the provider of public welfare (Evans, 2008:102), and a collective response to the highly supressed feminine traits under the image of androgyny during the Mao‐era (Wallis, 2006:98).…”

“…First, I propose to examine the potential impact of women's engagements in family online businesses on the notion of ‘men dominate the outside’ by looking into whether and how male online sellers are perceived as heads of households in front of the outside world despite their wives' de facto roles as co‐managers of online businesses. Secondly, the analysis on changes and continuities of the notion of ‘women dominate the inside’ in the Taobao village will include two emphases: women's double burden (Zuo, 2003; Wallis, 2006), and women's bargaining power in the family derived from their familial roles (Evans, 2008, 2017; Liu, 2016). The notion of ‘women dominate the inside’ entails that women are expected to ‘manage the household well’ ( chejia, 持家 ) based on their roles as responsible wives and mothers (Choi and Peng, 2016; Liu, 2016).…”

Empowerment through craziness: The German TV series Knallerfrauen and its female viewers in China

“…In this unusual Chinese case, the media representation of women took an abrupt historical turn: the Maoist doctrines not only refused to politicize gender differences but also actively chose to ignore them, which explains why the ideal woman was represented in widespread propaganda as a desexualized and masculinized 'iron girl', almost completely modeled on revolutionary male norms (Dai, 2002;Evans, 2002;Li, 2011;Wallis, 2006); whereas since the early 1990s, the dominant discourse of the market economy and consumerism re-feminized, sexualized and objectified women in the mass media (Li, 2014;Luo and Hao, 2007;Sun, 2009). This new representation quietly won the at NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIV on June 4, 2016 ecs.sagepub.com Downloaded from endorsement of a great number of (post)feminists due to its challenge to the coarse traditional revolutionary discourse in service of the state, but at the same time colluded with the ideology of the market economy, which in a way actually served the interests of the state: bolstering legitimacy by achieving and maintaining social stability and economic prosperity.…”