Ritualized Law and Livelihood Fragility of Left-Behind Women in Rural China

Abstract

Family separation in rural China has led to a considerably large number of left-behind women who have to deal with livelihood fragility. The Department for International Development (DFID) framework focusing on households provides a base to understand the livelihood fragility of these women. Based on this framework and the existing field research, this study identifies that the national macro-strategy of unsynchronized development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization leads to a separated migration model for rural families. Furthermore, the process of social modernization increases the fragility risk of how the left-behind family functions. The traditional gender culture expectations also directly affect rural families to make the livelihood strategy choice of, “male working outside, female taking care of home”. Based on the above theoretical research, this study extracts the concept of “ritualized law” to shed light on gender differentiation and family separation. A number of formal social security institutions have been established to promote the development of farmers, however, the ingrained culture gender differentiation encourages men to work in the profitable urban industry while women work in the field of unpaid agriculture and shoulder the responsibility of housework. This makes the formal institution a symbolic ornament for left-behind women, while they are forced to stay in rural areas and suffer from the fragility of livelihood.

Community Resilience Governance on Public Health Crisis in China

“…However, this appearance is decorative. It is just a “window” to the public [ 56 ]; that is, the policy system makes a symbolic gesture to the audience to a certain extent, and lacks responsiveness of actual behavior [ 57 ], and its existence plays an ornamental role but lacks a substantive role [ 58 ]. The ritualized institution hides various informal behaviors of the subjects regulated by the informal rules, when informal rules are superior to formal institutions or even affect their substantive functioning, especially when the institution execution mechanism is absent, formal institutions will be ritualized.…”

Ritualistic Institution and Livelihood Fragility of Female Migrant Workers in Urban China

“…Female migrant workers not only encounter the same problems faced by male migrants, but also put up with unique challenges caused by gender differences. The Chinese traditional gender culture confines women’s activities to trivial family affairs and regards men’s achievements as the realization of their own value, which marginalizes female migrant workers in the process of urban resource allocation [ 9 ]. Although female migrant workers have made great contributions to urban development and boosted their family income, they are in a state of competition with men for limited urban employment resources.…”

“…The DFID analysis framework ( Figure 2 ) outlines how vulnerable individuals pursue different livelihood strategies using a livelihood capital portfolio under the background of structures and processes, thus producing different livelihood outcomes and forming feedback impact on livelihood capital. Due to this, the DFID framework is conducive to the systematic analysis of livelihood vulnerability in the unified logical framework linking macro and micro factors [ 9 ]. In the DFID framework, the livelihood system, as the external environment of sustainable livelihood, runs through the whole process of the accumulation and combination of different forms of livelihood capital, the choice of livelihood strategies, the exertion of livelihood abilities, and the outcome of livelihood pursuits.…”

“…When informal rules are superior to formal rules, or the former erodes or even squeezes the function of the latter, the formalization of formal rules will arise. Thus, the system becomes a ritualistic institution, a kind of “symbolic ornament” [ 8 , 9 ]. In other words, the current series of policies for migrant workers is not an appropriate way to solve the problem.…”

Policy implementation challenges and the ritualization of public health emergency plans: An investigation of urban communities in Jiangsu Province, China

“…Nonetheless, after the outbreak of COVID-19, some regions in China experienced "failures" in implementing their public health emergency plans, many of which tended to be "ritualized. " Wang and Tang propose the concept of "ritualized law" to refer to systems that have virtually symbolic meaning and do not perform effectively in the practical application of the policy (2). In this study, "ritualization" is used to denote a pattern of behaviors concerning public health emergency planning whereby: new public health emergency plans are constantly being developed at all levels; emergency plan drills are conducted as required; emergency response subjects declare that they will activate the emergency plan during an emergency; yet emergency plans are not implemented or are selectively implemented during the emergency response.…”