Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-09T19:36:23.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

China's E-Commerce: Empowering Rural Women?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2019

Haiqing Yu  and
Lili Cui
Haiqing Yu
Affiliation:
School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne Australia. Email: haiqing.yu@rmit.edu.au.
Lili Cui*
Affiliation:
Department of E-commerce, School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance & Economics.
*
Email: cui.lili@mail.shufe.edu.cn (corresponding author).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article employs a feminist political economy perspective to explore the connection between e-commerce, entrepreneurship and gender in rural China. It discusses gendered engagement with, and discourses of, the new digital economy represented by Taobao villages, and asks: how has the success of rural e-commerce impacted the evolving gender mandate and hierarchy in a competitive market economy in rural China? Has rural women's participation in digital economic activities changed their gendered roles and the patriarchal structure in their family and village? This article argues that women's socioeconomic enablement does not necessarily translate into cultural and political empowerment. The enabling potential of female entrepreneurship is tempered by traditional constraints on women and digital capitalist exploitation of their cheap, flexible and docile labour.

摘要

本文采用女性主义政治经济学的视角，分析了中国农村社会中电子商务、企业家精神和性别之间的联系。我们探讨了以淘宝村为代表的新兴数字经济中，女性的参与程度和话语权。文章围绕以下问题展开讨论：（1）农村电子商务的发展和成功如何影响女性在市场经济中的作用和地位？（2）农村妇女积极参与数字经济活动，这能否改变她们在家庭中的地位，并撼动中国农村的父权制结构？本文认为，妇女在社会经济上的赋能并不必然会带来文化与政治上的赋权；通过农村电子商务而产生出来的女性企业家精神，受制于传统结构中对女性的限制，女性同时沦为受数字资本剥削的廉价、灵活且温顺的劳动力。

Keywords

genderfeminist political economyTaobao villagesdigital economycourtyard economyChina性别女性主义政治经济学淘宝村数字经济庭院经济中国
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 238 , June 2019 , pp. 418 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

AliResearch. 2015. “Nüxing chuangyezhe baogao” (Report on female entrepreneurs), http://i.aliresearch.com/file/20150521/2015women.pdf. Accessed 17 January 2017.Google Scholar
AliResearch. 2017. “Taobao cun xin tupo: Zhongguo taobao cun yanjiu baogao” (New breakthroughs for Taobao villages: research report on China's Taobao villages), http://i.aliresearch.com/file/20170125/20170125164026.pdf. Accessed 17 January 2017.Google Scholar
Alizila. 2016. “An introduction to Taobao villages,” http://www.alizila.com/an-introduction-to-taobao-villages/. Accessed 18 July 2016.Google Scholar
Amin, Ash (ed.). 1994. Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 1997. National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Avgerou, Chrisanthi. 2010. “Discourses on ICT and Development.” Information Technologies & International Development 6(3), 1–18.Google Scholar
Boateng, Richard, Heeks, Richard, Molla, Alemayehu and Hinson, Robert. 2008. “E-commerce and socio-economic development: conceptualizing the link.” Internet Research 18(5), 562–594.Google Scholar
Calabrese, Andrew. 2005. “Communication, global justice and the moral economy.” Global Media and Communication 1(3), 301–315.Google Scholar
CBNData. 2016. “Zhongguo dianshang hongren dashuju baogao” (Chinese e-commerce celebrity big data report), http://www.cbndata.com/report/69. Accessed 30 July 2017.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing. 2010. “The household registration system and migrant labor in China: notes on a debate.” Population and Development Review 36(2), 357–364.Google Scholar
Chen, Minglu. 2008. “Entrepreneurial women: personal wealth, local politics and tradition.” In Goodman, David S. G. (ed.), The New Rich in China. London: Routledge, 112–125.Google Scholar
CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center). 2017. “Di 39 ci Zhongguo hulianwang fazhan zhuangkuang tongji baogao” (The 39th statistical report on Chinese internet development), http://www.cnnic.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/hlwtjbg/201701/P020170123364672657408.pdf. Accessed 1 February 2017.Google Scholar
Cook, Joanne, Roberts, Jennifer and Waylen, Georgina (eds.). 2000. Towards a Gendered Political Economy. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Croll, Elisabeth. 1983. Chinese Women Since Mao. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Croll, Elisabeth. 1995. Changing Identities of Chinese Women: Rhetoric, Experience, and Self-perception in Twentieth-century China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Cui, Lili, and Pan, Shan L.. 2016. Nongcui dianshang xin shengtai: hulianwang dailai de jiyu yu tiaozhan (New Rural E-commerce Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges of the Internet). Beijing: Dianzi gongye chubanshe.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Hochschild, Arlie Russell (eds.). 2003. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Fu, Diana. 2009. “A cage of voices: producing and doing dagongmei in contemporary China.” Modern China 35(5), 527–561.Google Scholar
Gill, Rosalind. 2014. “Unspeakable inequalities: post feminism, entrepreneurial subjectivity, and the repudiation of sexism among cultural workers.” Social Politics 21(4), 509–528.Google Scholar
Guo, Yuhua, and Chen, Peng. 2011. “Digital divide and social cleavage: case studies of ICT usage among peasants in contemporary China.” The China Quarterly 207(September), 580–599.Google Scholar
Howell, Jude. 2006. “Women's political participation in China: in whose interests elections?” Journal of Contemporary China 15(49), 603–619.Google Scholar
Hu, Gongqun, and Jiang, Ying. 2017. “‘Ta jingji’ xianlu Zhongguo jingji de ‘yanzhi meili’” (“She economy” demonstrating Chinese economy's “beauty and charm”). Qiyejia xinxi 3, 59–60.Google Scholar
Jacka, Tamara. 2006. Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Jacka, Tamara. 2013a. “Working from within: women and the state in the development of the courtyard economy in rural China.” In Rai, Shirin M. and Lievesley, Geraldine (eds), Women and the State: International Perspectives. London: Routledge, 143–162.Google Scholar
Jacka, Tamara. 2013b. “Chinese discourses on rurality, gender and development: a feminist critique.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 40(6), 983–1007.Google Scholar
Jacka, Tamara, and Sargeson, Sally. 2015. “Representing women in Chinese village self-government: a new perspective on gender, representation, and democracy.” Critical Asian Studies 47(4), 477–494.Google Scholar
Janson, Marius, and Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka. 2005. “Making sense of e-commerce as social action.” Information Technology & People 18(40), 311–342.Google Scholar
Judd, Ellen. 1994. Gender and Power in Rural North China. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Judd, Ellen. 2002. The Chinese Women's Movement Between State and Market. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Leong, Carmen, Pan, Shan-Lin, Newell, Sue and Cui, Lili. 2016. “The emergence of self-organizing e-commerce ecosystems in remote villages of China: a tale of digital empowerment for rural development.” MIS Quarterly 40(2), 475–484.Google Scholar
Li, Dannie. 2017. “Fashion influencers in China: a new force for retail.” Tech in Asia, 21 March, https://www.techinasia.com/talk/fashion-influencer-china-retail. Accessed 10 August 2017.Google Scholar
Liao, Sara. 2016. “Precarious beauty: migrant Chinese women, beauty work, and precarity.” Chinese Journal of Communication 9(2), 139–152.Google Scholar
Liao, Sara. 2017. “Fashioning China: precarious creativity of women designers in shanzhai culture.” Communication, Culture & Critique 10(3), 422–440.Google Scholar
Liaw, H. Ray. 2008. “Women's land rights in rural China: transforming existing laws into a source of property rights.” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 17(7), 237–264.Google Scholar
McRobbie, Angela. 2010. “Reflections on feminism, immaterial labour and the post-Fordist regime.” New Formations 70, 60–76.Google Scholar
Oreglia, Elisa. 2013. “From farm to farmville: adoption of ICT in rural China.” Unpublished PhD diss., UC Berkeley.Google Scholar
Oreglia, Elisa. 2014. “ICT and (personal) development in rural China.” Information Technologies & International Development 10(3), 19–30.Google Scholar
Oreglia, Elisa, and Srinivasan, Janaki. 2016. “ICT, intermediaries, and the transformation of gendered power structures.” MIS Quarterly 40(2), 501–510.Google Scholar
Peterson, V. Spike. 2005. “How (the meaning of) gender matters in political economy.” New Political Economy 10(4), 499–521.Google Scholar
Qiu, Jack L. 2009. Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rai, Shirin M. 2013. Gender and the Political Economy of Development: From Nationalism to Globalization. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Risman, Barbara J. 2004. “Gender as a social structure: theory wrestling with activism.” Gender and Society 18(4), 429–450.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael J., and Sayre, Kate. 2009. “The female economy.” Harvard Business Review, September, https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy. Accessed 5 August 2017.Google Scholar
Sitoh, Mun Kiat, Pan, Shan L. and Cui, Lili. 2014. “The roles of opportunity processes in a social business model: insights from China's e-commerce villages.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2014), Auckland New Zealand, 14–17 December, http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2014/proceedings/EBusiness/1/. Accessed 20 July 2016.Google Scholar
Terranova, Tiziana. 2000. “Free labor: producing culture for the digital economy.” Social Text 63(18), 33–58.Google Scholar
Trauth, Eileen M. 2013. “The role of theory in gender and information systems research.” Information and Organization 23, 277–293.Google Scholar
True, Jacqui. 2010. “The political economy of violence against women: a feminist international relations perspective.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 32(1), 39–59.Google Scholar
True, Jacqui. 2012. The Political Economy of Violence Against Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Véras, Erika Zoeller. 2015. “Female entrepreneurship: from women's empowerment to shared value creation.” International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration 1(3), 50–63.Google Scholar
Wallis, Cara. 2013. Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Ming, and Wang, Shaoguang. 2003. “Suggestions on promoting the nonprofit sector in China.” Forum of International Development Studies 24, 53–74.Google Scholar
Wang, Zheng. 2000. “Gender, employment and women's resistance.” In Perry, Elizabeth and Selden, Mark (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge, 62–82.Google Scholar
Xu, Yuqin. 2016. “From e-commerce to she-commerce: the rise of she-era? A small-scale case study on female entrepreneurs on Taobao in China.” MA thesis, Uppsala University, Sweden.Google Scholar
Yue, Lin, Pan, Shan L., Tan, Barney and Cui, Lili. 2015. “Digitally enabled social innovation: a case study of community empowerment in rural China.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2015), Fort Worth, USA, 13–15 December, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fbac/3e4f99af0571154b555cb4b7318cbb106415.pdf. Accessed 22 July 2016.Google Scholar
Zhang, Lin. 2017. “Fashioning the feminine self in ‘prosumer capitalism:’ women's work and the transnational reselling of Western luxury online.” Journal of Consumer Culture 17(2), 187–204.Google Scholar