HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Women in agriculture in China make up a diverse group of women who support agricultural activities in their country. Because China is a large country, rural women should not be considered a monolithic group, but instead have different strategies for success based on group or family relationships.


History

Based on
Confucian Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a Religious Confucianism, religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, ...
principals, farming was an expression of "moral worth" for men of all social classes in China while weaving and creating textiles was a way for women to show their worth in society. Traditionally, "women were subordinated to men," and although men had primary responsibility for the farm, women were certainly involved in farming in the early Chinese economy. During the
Han dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
, women's contributions to agriculture in China increased, most likely due to the innovation and popularization of the pit-farming method. Textile creation, which relied on help and silk, was also considered by early Chinese to be an "agricultural product" rather than a separate craft. Prior to the Chinese Revolution, small family farms where women contributed to farm and house work, made up the majority of agriculture in China. Women's contributions to the family farm were often overlooked by early twentieth century scholars because women's work was not recognized by men and not reported in economic surveys. Women also did not have land rights in pre-revolutionary China. As China went through the reform, the farm sector became a powerful force in the economy. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China makes the provision that women are equal to men, but in practice, traditional gender roles have persisted where men are considered "superior to women." After 1949, the Chinese government strongly encouraged women's participation in agriculture. During the 1980s, China went through a "decollectivization of agriculture," as part of the
household responsibility system The household responsibility system ( zh, s=家庭联产承包责任制, t=家庭聯產承包責任制, p=jiātíng liánchǎn chéngbāo zérènzhì), or contract responsibility system, was a practice in China, first adopted in agriculture in 1979 ...
(HRS) which caused individual households to "undertake a vast majority of agricultural production." HRS also contributed to a greater amount of commercialization in Chinese agriculture. Women's ability to own land was again affected by the HRS, which began to discourage women who had married from filing readjustments to land-ownership, making married women "effectively landless." By the mid 1990s, 80% of Chinese women lived in rural areas and were doing approximately 70 to 80 percent of the farm work, in addition to caring for family members. After this, however, women's contribution to farm work began to fall and by 2000 had dropped below 51 percent. During this time period, village governments counted women as fully "part of the village labor force," and did not keep separate records for men's and women's labor. The number of women involved in migrant farm work has risen steadily since the 1980s, only 1% of women were earning money as migrant workers, in 2000 that number rose to 7%. In 2000, women made up 59% of livestock activities.


Modern farms

Today, agriculture remains a "dominant occupation in China." China also plans to register all landowners by 2018, a plan which may actually disenfranchise women. However, 13 different provinces of China "issued policy documents that require the protection of women's equal rights to land in the registration process." The problem of women's land rights involves the fact that most married women's land rights "are retained in their natal households." In addition, a survey taken after 2012 found that "only 17.1 percent of existing land contracts and 38.2 percent of existing land certificates include women's names. Women entrepreneurs in agriculture have been enabled by new market forces to start their own businesses. Shared Harvest, opened in 2012 by Shi Yan, is an
organic farm Organic farming, also known as ecological farming or biological farming,Labelling, article 30 o''Regulation (EU) 2018/848 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 on organic production and labelling of organic products and re ...
and one of the first farms to take part in the
Community Supported Agriculture Community-supported agriculture (CSA model) or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alterna ...
(CSA) model. Trends towards buying CSA foods, such as consumers wanting more organic produce or rejecting the industrialization of agriculture, has helped grow more CSA farms in China.


See also

*
Agriculture in China China primarily produces rice, wheat, potatoes, tomato, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed, corn and soybeans. History The development of farming over the course of China's history has played a key role in supporting th ...
*
Chinese rural left behind women The Chinese rural left behind women have emerged along with the rural population who has migrated in the country called internal migration after Chinese Economic Reform in the early 1980s. Usually, the rural Chinese people that were "left behind" a ...
*
Women in China Like women in many other cultures, women in China have been historically oppressed. For thousands of years, women in China lived under the patriarchal social order characterized by the Confucius teaching of “filial piety.” In modern China ...


References


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


The Village and the Girl
{{DEFAULTSORT:Women in agriculture in China Women in China Women in agriculture