Women and self-employment in post-socialist rural China: Side job, individual career or family venture

The rise of private sector business in urban China has led to more women engaging in low-end self-employment. This study, however, reveals a more complicated story in the countryside. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted in a Chinese village, this study finds that the women took the lead in developing sideline self-employment and were then attracted to rural wage employment in the 1980s. With the privatization of rural industries and the rise of capital-intensive self-employment in the 1990s, some women were forced into low-end self-employment, but others were attracted to high-end self-employment, forging individual careers and family ventures. In more recent times, younger women have been more inclined to work on-and-off, balancing self-employment pursuits with the desire to be a good mother. This pattern marks a shift from the continuous multitasking practised by the older generation.