I team teach a university course on contemporary China, and although I've researched this issue considerably, I'm still not sure on where I am with it.
Joint venture and foreign invested firms (mostly US and Japan) tend to be the most exploitative, especially of women. They tend to hire only very young migrant women (rural women temporarily living in urban areas), and make them work long hours with total control over their lives. The workers must sign contracts which forbid them from seeking higher pay elsewhere, or they lose all the pay for the contract period. The pay is horrible by our standards. But, as athena says, these women want these jobs and relative to what they can make farming or in rural enterprises, the pay isn't bad. In their own villages, the women are seen as highly successful.
The women in these factories are not being oppressed at the hands of the Chinese government. They are being exploited by US and Japanese business interests. In terms of working conditions and equal wages for equal pay, women make out much better working in State owned enterprises.
Joint venture and foreign invested firms (mostly US and Japan) tend to be the most exploitative, especially of women. They tend to hire only very young migrant women (rural women temporarily living in urban areas), and make them work long hours with total control over their lives. The workers must sign contracts which forbid them from seeking higher pay elsewhere, or they lose all the pay for the contract period. The pay is horrible by our standards. But, as athena says, these women want these jobs and relative to what they can make farming or in rural enterprises, the pay isn't bad. In their own villages, the women are seen as highly successful.
The women in these factories are not being oppressed at the hands of the Chinese government. They are being exploited by US and Japanese business interests. In terms of working conditions and equal wages for equal pay, women make out much better working in State owned enterprises.
