Gender Studies Programme - Wednesday Gender Seminars

Wednesday Gender Seminars Recap

Spring 2023

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

12 Apr 2023 (Wed) Mini-Conference of Thesis of BSSc & MA in Gender Studies 2023

Representation of Women in Film Industry: Rising or Falling. By BI Jijun Gin

BI Jijun Gin conducted a study investigating how people perceive female representation in the film industry. The study used a Google questionnaire and found that women are still underrepresented in critical roles within the film industry, far from achieving gender parity. However, the study's findings also suggest optimism for the future of gender equality in the film industry.

Gender, Sexuality and Sports: A Comparative Analysis of the Hong Kong Spectatorship of Men and Women's Professional Basketball in 2023. By LEUNG Brandon

The thesis examines the treatment of male and female basketball players in the NBA and WNBA respectively. Based on a gender perspective, the study analyzes how Hong Kong basketball fans perceive basketball development. The research employs a qualitative methodology involving individual interviews with ten participants. The study concludes that WNBA players possess powerful strengths and should be respected, despite the need for more support from the interviewees. Additionally, marketing strategies are essential to increasing awareness of and attention to women's basketball.

How do gendered learning outcomes differ in PBL learning in the Netherlands and Hong Kong educational systems? By CHUNG Pui Yung

This thesis compares the gendered learning outcomes of problem-based learning (PBL) in the Netherlands and Hong Kong educational systems. The study aims to identify any significant differences in the learning outcomes of male and female students. It employs a quantitative methodology and compares the academic achievement of male and female students in PBL-based educational programs in both countries. The findings provide important insights into the gendered learning outcomes and have implications for policymakers and educators interested in gender equality in education.

How does the "LGBT+" label affect the identity construction process of the "LGBT+"? A Correlation Qualitative Research in Hong Kong. By TING Pak To

A key objective of this study is to examine how labeling affects LGBT+ identity and behavior. It explores the process of generating gender identities, establishes theories about the influence of labels on identity formation, and examines the effects on participants and social environments. A purposeful sampling approach was employed to conduct semi-structured interviews with sexual minorities who were born and raised in Hong Kong. The study found that participants found the LGBT+ label helpful, identified stereotypes both within and outside the LGBT+ community, and had varying views on the impact of labels on their identity construction process.

Misogynistic Discourse Analysis in LIHKG: The Reaction of LIHKG Users Towards Non-Consensual Intimate Images. By Li Yeuk Lam

The thesis examines how users of LIHKG maintain a misogynistic culture in discussing non-consensual intimate images (NCII). The study aims to reflect the distress of NCII victim-survivors and to better inform effective legislative and intervention strategies for supporting them. The research uses critical discursive analysis to analyze two incidents of NCII shared on LIHKG, finding that shaming and blaming are frequently utilized to devalue female victim-survivors and that there is a continuum of gender-based, sexualized, and abusive practices, including doxing, online sexual harassment, and highlighting of private information to humiliate victims. However, the study is limited by the deletion of significant discussions and materials by the platform and policy.

THE QUEERNESS HIDE-AND-SEEK: Chen Ran and Her Female Writing in the 90 Chinese Literature. By HUANG Minyan

The research explored Chen Ran’s writing and aimed to re-allocate the 90s women writers' work and to reexamine the male-dominant, heteronormative, and Han-centric Chinese literary discourse through a queer reading strategy. The author seeks to capture the gender-transcend consciousness of women writers in the 90s and examine their works through various lenses, such as feminist attention to madwomen and psychoanalytic attention to the Electra Complex. The takeaway message is the importance of using a queer reading strategy to explore Chinese literature's complexities and give queerness names.

Prof. WONG Ivy Wang suggested that students should justify their methodology and explain their analysis in their thesis projects, especially when discussing their sample size and arriving at conclusions. Prof. Ivy also encouraged students to work closely with their supervisors, especially when dealing with sensitive topics or samples to ensure proper data handling and identity protection.

Written by: JIN, Shuyi

The Betrayed Wives: Changing Images of Women Characters Involved in Extramarital Affairs on Chinese TV. By SHEN Shiting

This thesis compares the major TV dramas featuring betrayed wives and explores how the representations have changed over the last two decades with the evolving social context and values in China, suggesting that although women’s search for self-actualisation is at the core of all the dramas, the female characters and the portrayals of their growths are confined by their roles as wife, daughter, and mother, with their childcare and housework, emotional and sexual values highlighted in the dramas.

Become a Mother or Become a Professional: A Qualitative Study of Unique Dynamics between Motherhood Fulfillment and Career Aspirations among Female Physicians in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. By QIAN Xiaoxuan

With in-depth interviews and participant observation, the thesis explores how the pressure of balancing family and career affects the preferences for career and family choices of female physicians in Shenzhen — how the imbalance of medical resources and the pressure of neoliberal feminism in this flourishing economy construct not only dilemma, but also a sense of achievement for the working mothers, such as the discontent with salary, long working hours and the tensions between their professional identity and roles at their family, intertwining with the satisfaction of achieving an image of contemporary women.

Under the Censorship: Slash Fictions in New Era. By YANG Siman

The thesis seeks to understand how women slash fiction writers negotiate with censorship — a fundamental condition of slash fiction's production and consumption on China’s online public platforms — by conducting in-depth interviews. Writers are found to have developed different strategies targeting the instability of the censorship system and the variations of censorship schema on different platforms to negotiate with the permeating censorship in different areas, such as the communication with fandom, and writer’s creation with internalised censorship.

Culturally Constructed Femininity in Modern China: An Analysis of the Female Protagonist in Chinese Xianxia Drama Ashes of Love. By LIANG Yufu

The thesis focuses on the representation of femininities in Chinese Xianxia drama (仙俠劇), using the female protagonist of Ashes of Love as an example; it is a textual analysis that highlights the distinctions between Xianxia drama and other genres: female characters in Xianxia drama are more likely to break the traditional and stereotypical gender roles and femininities, reflected as their excellent physical capacity and autonomy in different life choices. The thesis also includes an audience analysis to understand how the distinct representation of femininity is received by the audience and contributes to the construction of femininity discourse.

Ideals vs. Realities? A Study on Why Young Chinese Women Want to Learn Programming. By ZHANG Yue

The thesis focuses on how zhuanma (轉碼), an increasingly popular career alternative among highly educated young women in China to turn to programming from other disciplines, is complicated by the gender ideology in workplace, education system, and other social domains. It analyses data from mainstream discussion forums and conducts interviews, pointing out that despite women considering zhuanma as a means to freedom, they are facing the gender stereotypes of women as the major difficulty to be considered qualified and competent in the IT industry.

Mainland Migrant Wives’ Use of Social Media RED in Hong Kong. By ZHANG Xunyue

The thesis explores how the multiplicity of mainland migrant wives’ identities as wife, mother, and the unempowered due to their immigration status in Hong Kong, co-construct their media participation, by studying RED accounts run by migrant wives. Their active use of RED does empower them by expanding their social circles, rewarding them with satisfaction and a sense of achievement, and creating new possibilities, yet it also requires considerable time and effort to run the account that is usually considered as a transient rather than a formal job, and deal with online harassments.

Written by: FONG, Yuk Ping

22 Mar 2023 (Wed) Empathic Accuracy, Mental Depletion, and Relationship Satisfaction among Heterosexual Romantic Couples

In the Wednesday Gender Seminar on March 22, Tang Xiaolei, an MPhil student from CUHK, shared her ongoing psychological research on empathic accuracy (EA), mental depletion, and relationship satisfaction among heterosexual romantic couples.

First, Tang structured her research meaningfully and innovatively by reviewing literature and defining key concepts. While EA is proven positively associated with relationship satisfaction, people neglect factors that could affect EA performance and the effect of perceived EA within romantic relationships. To fill the gap, Tang focused on how two possible factors, perceived mental depletion and gender, could affect one’s performance on EA and explored how actual and perceived EA would be associated with heterosexual relationship satisfaction.

Next, Tang elaborated on her research design and process thoroughly. Instead of using the classic standard stimuli paradigm of EA studies, she applied daily diary assessment to achieve a higher ecological validity and enable cross-lagged analysis in a short time. Eighty-seven heterosexual couples completed a baseline survey independently about empathy quotient and relationship satisfaction. Then, a two-week daily assessment was conducted on mental depletion level, self and partner’s relationship feelings and mood, and EA performance estimation. During data analysis, the hierarchical linear and actor-partner interdependence models were employed for different research questions. The findings revealed an inverse correlation between mental depletion and EA, and there was no significant difference in EA performance regarding gender. Actual and perceived EA levels both contributed to relationship satisfaction. Additionally, outcomes identified gendered association patterns.

Tang also mentioned several limitations and practical implications of her project. Since the study has a cross-sectional design and intensive daily assessment, the researcher could not infer the relationship between the variables. Future scholars should pay attention to longitudinal design to examine the relationships. Besides, the survey did not differentiate perceived EA in emotional valence to avoid participants guessing purposes behind, or investigate an inclusive age range for staying more homogenous for participants. As for practical benefits, the study may raise awareness among relationship health practitioners and the public of the importance of communication and care for mental depletion.

Written by: DU, Ruini

Empathic accuracy refers to the extent to which individuals’ ability to accurately infer others’ thoughts and feelings (Ickes, 2009). Previous findings have shown positive correlations between empathic accuracy and relationship satisfaction (Howland, 2016, Sened et al., 2017). However, individuals’ empathic accuracy may be influenced by various factors, such as their genders (Ickes et al., 2000; Klein & Hedges, 2001) and perceived mental depletion (i.e., subjective perception of mental resources availability; Hiraoka & Nomura, 2016; Meiring et al., 2014). Whether these factors can affect individuals’ empathic accuracy and thus further influence romantic relationship satisfaction remains unclear.

Therefore, the researcher, Xiaolei Tang, conducted a study investigating how perceived mental depletion and gender are related to people’s empathic accuracy in romantic relationships. Specifically, she measured both partners’ actual and perceived empathic accuracy and explored how these different kinds of empathic accuracy relate to their relationship satisfaction. In her study, different from some traditional lab-conducted paradigms, she assessed through daily diaries, which provided high ecological validity.

Eighty-seven heterosexual couples residing in Hong Kong participated in the research, aged 18 to 40 (MAge=29, SDAge=5.18). Among these 174 participants, 97.1% were Chinese, and 97.1% reported being in a committed relationship. Before the daily diary assessment, each participant completed baseline questionnaires assessing their baseline empathy quotient, relationship satisfaction, and demographics independently. Then each of them completed a 14-day daily diary assessment that measured their daily mental depletion, their own and partner’s relationship feelings, their own and partner’s moods, and their empathic accuracy estimations. The daily assessment ended when both partners completed the questionnaires in the same 11 days.

Data were analyzed through Hierarchical Linear Modeling and Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. The results showed that mental depletion level was negatively associated with empathic accuracy in romantic couples, people with a higher level of perceived mental depletion performed lower empathic accuracy. Generally speaking, there was no gender difference in males’ and females’ performance on empathic accuracy. Women’s relationship satisfaction was related to their own and partners’ EA in relationship feelings and their own EA in mood, and men’s relationship satisfaction was related to their partners’ EA in relationship feelings and their own EA in mood. The limitations and implications of the study were also discussed.

Written by: HE, Chuting

15 Mar 2023 (Wed) Sajiao Gong: Intimacy Fantasy and Resignification of Femininity in Danmei Fiction

At the Wednesday Seminar on March 15, Ms. Zheng Lin, an M.Phil. student from the CUHK Gender Studies Programme, presented her research on the intimacy fantasy and resignification of femininity in Danmei Fiction by giving a genre study on a trendy persona type, "Sajiao Gong" in the Danmei's database writing within the Chinese context.

Ms. Zheng traced back the Western/Japanese origin of Slash/ Yaoi to the localization of Danmei/BL fiction and its current commercial transformation in China, highlighting its role in carrying heterosexual female prosumers' pursuit of idealized intimate relationships by applying queer and transgressive plots to male characters. By addressing the issue within a model of "personality (人設)" and "couples (CP)", she noticed the recent popularity of the dominant male characters' femininity, known as Sajiao Gong (撒嬌攻).

The word "Sajiao" (acting in a cutesy manner to gain affection) in the modern Chinese context carries the paradoxical and misogynic interplay of "virtue" and "stigma" all at once. However, by reading the Danmei fiction, Ms. Zheng indicated that a positive possibility provided by the dominant persona, "Gong (攻方)", might untie the passive implication of "Sajiao" as they proactively perform femininity and softness to intentionally promote the romantic same-sex relationship and dissolve the anxiety about the femininity of passive persona "Shou (受方)".

With the rise of neoliberal and feminist consciousness in modern intimacies, Ms. Zheng posed that Danmei fiction provides an experimental field for heterosexual women-dominant imaginaries and pursuits of intimacy, constantly responding to their realistic anxieties as known as what Dai Jinhua called "the dilemma of Mulan" of Chinese women maintaining subjectivity and independence only through performing the extreme masculinity.

Echoing former studies' interpretation of "soft masculinity", Ms. Zheng used "Sajiao Gong" to illustrate that women's preference for male femininity in the production and consumption of Danmei fiction could be related to their real-life reflection on female identity, and gender temperament. This study provides a feminist perspective different from a male-dominant one through the re-imagination of intimacy and the resignification of femininity.

Written by: HUANG, Minyan

15 Feb 2023 (Wed) Penalty, Bonus, or Needs: Family Care Responsibilities and Work in Three Labor Regimes of Chinese Societies

This mixed method research conducted by Prof Dai and her team investigates and compares the employers’ perspectives via female and male employees with various family responsibilities in three different labor market regimes (Hong Kong’s labor market, Shen Zhen’s private sector, and Shen Zhen’s public sector). While multiple researchers have argued that caregivers are uncompetitive in market meritocracy, this research has shed light on how the situation actually differs in three cultural environments and market regimes. In addition, this research has put on a gendered lens on caregivers’ struggles in the labor market, particularly female employees who suffered from the traditional norms.

Firstly, it is found that employers in Hong Kong hold quite a few particular cultural stereotypes when evaluating family caregivers. Family virtuocracy is considered a significant advantage for both males and females. Despite this caregiver bonus, mothers will suffer from motherhood penalty when it comes to childcare as opposed to elder care. It’s evident that the labor market structure is still in compliance with gender norms. Secondly, the data from Shenzhen’s private sector has proved the dominance of market meritocracy. Under this circumstance, the fatherhood penalty is also prevailing, and filial piety is not recognized as a bonus in the private sector. Employers consider work-family negotiation and balance an extremely private problem that employees have to address by themselves. Finally, Shenzhen’s public sector, where market meritocracy power has been lashed, shows respect for employees’ needs. This specific pattern with Chinese characteristics, however, creates a new dimension of inequality, such as outsourcing without guarantee, invisible discrimination against single women, and inward exploitation for the good of the community.

In conclusion, the three various patterns demonstrate that the factors and norms influencing employers to evaluate family caregivers are multifaceted in addition to meritocracy. It is also noticeable that gender norms existed in all three different labor market regimes. Although there are now only preliminary data analyses and conclusions at this stage, it is expected to see further research development as well as core findings in the final article.

Written by: ZHANG Xunyue

18 Jan 2023 (Wed) Tokophobia as Feminist Resistance? Female Netizens’ Reproductive Experiences and Discourses in China’s Cyberspace

Gender inequality related to reproduction is a global issue, and the personal and family spheres, as objects of power control, make individual choices often the result of internalized power structures and gender norms. With the rising number of well-educated women with university degrees and high female labor participation, the fertility rate continues to drop in China. Concerned about the demographic change and the population crisis, the Chinese state turned to pro-natalist policy since 2021, despite the lack of supportive maternity and child-care policies.

This study focuses on young women’s reproductive dilemma posed by patchy patriarchy’s essentialist discourses and their individual desires. It further demonstrates the characteristics of the public cyberspace where women gain knowledge, exchange information and express their opinions about their reproductive experiences. This study also explores the role cyberspace play in shaping gender discourses in contemporary China. Conducted on Douban, a popular forum among Chinese urban young women, the study collected 3153 posts under the topic ‘What does reproduction mean to women?’ and analyzed the most “liked” 100 posts with thematic coding.

The findings suggest that discussions on Douban are predominantly focused on negative experiences of new motherhood. Women are physically and emotionally dehumanized in the process of pregnancy and childbirth. Due to the patriarchal family value and the essentialist gender discourse, motherhood is naturalized and romanticized, which has led to the ‘widow-style childrearing’ and the sacrifice of female individuality and professional career. As a result, in the absence of public support, women have to rely on private sources to address emotional issues and access female-centered reproductive knowledge. The phenomenon of tokophobia presented in online discussions is a resistance to naturalized motherhood. The discussion of childbirth in cyberspace has brought the invisible labor undertaken by women into the public sphere, which is feminist in nature.

Written by: ZHANG, Mengya

1月18日，Xie Kailing 博士和 Zhou Yunyun 博士在線上性別研討會上講演了兩人正在合作進行的研究——「恐育作為女權抵抗？中國網絡空間中女性網民的生殖經驗和話語」。兩位研究者首先勾勒了研究所處的中國語境，中國獨生子女政策使得女性獲得高等教育的機會大大上升，雖然在全球範圍內，婦女的教育程度與生育率呈負相關，但在中國，異性戀婚姻中女性養育子女仍舊是一種具有道德強制力的社會規範。兩位研究者借用 Evans 所提出的「支離破碎的父權」（patchy patriarchy）這一概念，認為將女性生育職責「自然化」、「本質化」的話語仍舊具有某種權威性，成為國家推行政策時的話術，並在公共文化生活中，例如在售賣母嬰用品的廣告中被不斷地生產和傳播。隨著出生率下降帶來的老齡化危機的初現，自2021年起中國政府轉而採取支持生育的政策，女性面臨著愈受嚴峻的生育壓力。而市場經濟驅動形成的以慾望為核心的現代式的對「自我」的追求，以及中國近年來在年輕女性群體中愈受浩大的女性主義聲浪則進一步成為引發女性在網絡空間中關於生育激烈探討的契機。為了探察受過良好教育的年輕女性對這一生育困境的回應，以及網絡空間在這種生育困境討論中的作用，兩位研究者對熱度極高的豆瓣主題帖「生育對一位女性意味著什麼」進行了的話語分析。在以主題式編碼為主的初步話語分析中，研究者們發現大多數的話語都圍繞著生育的消極體驗及其作為一種「被掩蓋的黑暗秘密」展開，並進一步展示了話語群中三個顯著的主題：生孩子作為一種肉體和情感上的雙重創傷；「喪偶式育兒」剝奪了女性的個體性；缺少女性中心的知識生產和對父權制結構的反思。在講演的最後，研究者們進一步指出了這一現象的複雜性：回帖中沒有出現明顯的反對生育的聲音，而是更多地集中在經驗分享，給予建議和女性的不同的生育選擇上，儘管帖子的發表者們並沒有明確自我表明女權主義立場的傾向，但她們關注和討論著與女權主義緊密相關的議題。研究者們認為，網絡空間提供了一種另類的公共空間，使得在社會空間中被迫靜默的女性經驗相互溝通，女性話語得以建構。

Written by: ZHENG, Lin

Fall 2022

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

16 Nov 2022 (Wed) The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Exploring family and work lives of lesbians in China

Prof Lo’s presentation examines the ways in which lesbians explore opportunities and navigate constraints in their family and work lives in urban China. Research reveals that the interconnection between the economic and intimate life of lesbians in modern cities is commodified. They not feel empowerment through navigate lives in work and pink market as resourceful consumers, but also intersecting with sociopolitical and neoliberal power with their everyday practices on a larger background.

Although the respectable queer citizens could make relatively free expression of their sexual identity through the consumption of commodities and capital, opportunities to subvert traditional gender expectations carry a high price tag, which could be unaffordable for many economically disadvantaged lesbians. The hidden danger here is that commercial logic may cover personal voice. That is it transforms feminism from a political movement to a non-politicized product and personal attitude. And the paper also point out that lesbians also face the hinders in the labour market. Except from fashion field, in which sexual minorities have their own traffic（自带流量）. In most workplaces, lesbians are cautious about disclosing their sexual orientation because of the fear of discrimination and prejudice. It inspire us to think how gender norms, heteronormativity, and policy intersect in generating obstacles for Chinese lesbians to thrive as respectable adult workers. This has important implications for further attempts to help adult worker to fit better with people's diverse work /family needs.

Despite from everyday practices and interactions，there’s also need to observe the penetration of digital media into daily life. And it is easy to find that in many mon-homosexual-oriented social media software in China, lesbians have less visibility compared with gays, which is similar to the second point of the article's research gap.

Written by: XU Yinuo

On November 16, the topic of professor LO’s speech was the interplay between intimacy and commodification by exploring the family and work lives of lesbians in China.

She began her speech with the research objectives and the research question, which were how do Chinese lesbians navigate their economic and intimate lives in a context where same-sex relationships are yet to be socially or legally recognized, and how do gender and sexuality intersect with the wider socio-political and neoliberal climate in shaping Chinese lesbians’ economic and intimate lives. The main research gaps were underground queer scenes in more restrictive contexts, everyday practices in commodification and sexuality, and Chinese lesbians.
After introducing the challenges and opportunities of the queer community, the rise of queer desires, and the pink market, she told us her research method is an in-depth interview about well-educated lesbians in Beijing. There were three findings. Firstly, participants' intimate lives are 'commodified', because their choices about intimacy and same-sex marriage are related to the workplace and pink market. Secondly, the ways they use to avoid gendered and sexual obstacles in the labor market by hiding or fictitious their sexual orientation, gender expression, and marital status are 'commodified’. Thirdly, most participants’ strategies to accommodate and/or resist established norms are finding their own comfort zone.

In conclusion, this research showed how commodification and intimacy interact with each other, and the dilemma of Chinese lesbians that they must get a decent job to have the life they want, but due to the gendered and sexual obstacles, they cannot openly lead the life they want.

Written by: ZHANG Yue

At the talk on 16 November 2022, Prof. LO Iris shared her project, "the Interplay between Intimacy and Commodification: Exploring Family and Work Lives of Lesbians in China." Based on the in-depth interviews with lesbians living in Beijing, she delved into the economic and intimate lives of lesbians in the Chinese urban landscape and weaved it with the political and neoliberal atmosphere in China.
She proposed that 1978 is the watershed compared with previously stigmatized, although not illegal, queer living circumstances, allowing the new exploration of queer subjectivities. Queer people were shaped by middle-class cosmopolitan values that encouraged them to pursue their material and emotional desire without transgressing social norms or challenging the limitation that the government set. During the interview, Prof. LO found that urban lesbians were eager to enter the labour market to gain enough money to become respectful citizens, capable workers, and resourceful consumers. And they expected this would bring them more freedom and subjectivity to their sexual orientation.

However, Prof. LO also found that the queer agency that the market brought was always intertwined with vulnerability. The strategies that lesbians adopted to sustain decent jobs providing the economic foundation for the life they wanted may also reinforce the gender and sexual orientation hierarchy. For instance, lesbians must be cautious about disclosing their sexual orientation in the workplace. They would try to hide their sexual orientation and pretend to be heterosexual. They would constantly come across the question of why they still stay single and even need to lie to their colleagues that they have got married to a heterosexual man or try to perform a traditional social script of femininity. Also, although they were determined to commodify their labour power, there was no guarantee they could earn as much money as expected since the gender wage gap still exists.
In the open discussion, several valuable and debatable points were highlighted. For instance, does the commodification in the research refers to labour or intimacy? Is the theoretical framework expandable to other Chinese intimacy phenomena, like dating shows? Is the concept of intimacy proper to explain the performance of gender norms and the interest in personal life in the workplace? Is earning enough money truly free lesbians from parents' expectations of heteronormative life?

Written by: ZHENG Lin

9 Nov 2022 (Wed) Employing domestic workers and gender gap in domestic labor among working parents: An effective strategy?

At last Wednesday seminar, Prof. Adam Cheung presented his research on how live-in foreign domestic workers (FDW) help reduce unpaid domestic labor for dual-earning parents in Hong Kong.

Consisting of 4-5% of HK population, FDWs play an unignorable role in HK society, and around 1/5 married population in HK live with a domestic worker. While research on FDWs’ living/working conditions flourished, limited studies have investigated the changes they brought to the employer families. Prof. Cheung therefore shifted the research focus to the hiring families. He also pointed out that, the well-established time-saving effect of the labor outsourcing nature of hiring domestic workers might not be applied to Hong Kong context for two reasons. Firstly, live-in domestic workers could generate more management tasks for the employers. Secondly, the prevailing intensive-parenting beliefs might hinder the delegation of all childcare tasks to the domestic workers, that is the delegation-involvement paradox. Instead, the time saved in housework might be taken up by the parents to do more childcare/management tasks, producing a time-displacement effect. As the emotional and communal nature of proposed new tasks, a gendered labor pattern might be expected.

Prof. Cheung’s study used a two-stage mixed-method design. The quantitative data of a representative sample of working parents (N=791, Nwith live-in help=265) suggested a time-displacement effect of live-in domestic help. Although paid help significantly reduced the time parents spent on housework, parents with live-in domestic workers spent around 3 hours more per week in unpaid labor than did those without paid help. The increased labor involved managing the domestic worker and childcare. The following in-depth interviews (N = 20) revealed parents’ subjective perception of the use of live-in domestic help as a strategy to achieve better parenting. In terms of gendered labor division, with a live-in helper, working mothers saved more time in housework but also had a larger burden of management and childcare than working fathers. No effect of hiring live-in help on diminishing gender inequality was founded, and working mothers had a higher total labor hours than fathers in both conditions.

Written by: TANG Xiaolei

Employing foreign domestic workers and gender gap in domestic labor among working parents: An Effective Strategy

The use of live-in domestic labor is popular among dual-earning parents. Around one-third of dual-earning parents in Hong Kong currently hire live-in domestic helpers. This study provides a critical examination of the time-saving hypothesis from the domestic outsourcing literature on the roles of hiring live-in help for household labor and situates the time-saving effect in the literature of intensive parenting. The research uses mixed method, analyzes quantitative data from a representative household survey to investigate the association between employing live-in domestic help and time spent by the working fathers and mothers on housework, childcare, and tasks related to managing domestic helpers, and also analyzes qualitative data from in-depth interviews of first-hand experiences about the role of hiring help in household labor to unpack the meaning of hiring help and its relationship with the notion and practices of parenting.

The findings suggest that the use of live-in domestic help is a specialization strategy to strive for perfection in parenting for parents. By outsourcing household chores and more routinized childcare tasks to the helpers, working parents, especially mothers, can focus on emotional bonding and tasks conducive to the development of their children. Working parents hiring live-in domestic work spent significantly fewer hours in housework, however, the reduced time in housework is totally replaced by the increased time on childcare and managing the helper. The time-saving effect of using domestic help is stronger for women than for men but it does not reduce gender inequality, mothers took up most of the new role of managing domestic helpers to deal with both household chores and routinized childcare work. Parenting strategies, though, are more intensified on the part of the mothers. The gender gap still exists.

Written by: ZHANG Mengya

Although there has been a lot of research on FDWs (Foreign Domestic Workers) in Hong Kong recently, Professor Cheung's research is very refreshing. Unlike other places of the world, Hong Kong has a tradition of employing live-in FDWs rather than flexible helpers for domestic outsourcing, which means that the former has a higher threshold, is more inflexible, and requires the employer's family to spend more time negotiating with and managing. Also, Hong Kong is a well-known city for its culture of intensive parenting. Many Hong Kong parents will consider hiring FDWs as a strategy to practice their intensive parenting.

Based on domestic outsourcing and intensive parenting, Professor Cheung has studied the time-use patterns between Hong Kong families with and without FDWS through a mixed-method of quantitative and qualitative research and has come up with conclusions that are different from previous research. He found that the time-saving effects of domestic outsourcing are overestimated, and the time-displacement fits Hong Kong’s condition more. In Hong Kong, hiring FDWS does save parents (mainly mothers) some time in housework, but the time of child-care and managing helper increase. Due to the expectation of intensive mothering, these two tasks are still gendered and mothers always do more, which indicates hiring help cannot enhance gender equality.

In my opinion, Professor Cheung's research perspective and findings are very inspiring. As someone interested in domestic outsourcing in mainland China, I have only focused on work-family time conflicts in the family, but not aware of the chores-childcare conflicts (especially for mothers). In addition, Professor Cheung also emphasizes the importance of the ideology of intensive parenting. In mainland China, the role of FDWs is usually taken by grandparents. However, after the abolition of extra-curricular classes, will parents' anxiety turn into a form of intensive parenting and prompt them to hire young educated helpers to do the child-care work? This is still underexplored and deserves our attention.

All in all, I really enjoyed this seminar and it gave me a lot of inspiration for my research.

Written by: ZHANG Xunyue

5 Oct 2022 (Wed) Gender Research Centre Orientation Talk: Honour Based Violence: Minority Women As Agents of Change

At Gender Research Center Orientation Talk on 5 October 2022, Dr. Raees Baig shared the research project Honour Based Violence: Minority Women as Agents of Change and presented a guidebook which is the product of this project.

During her involvement in local NGO’s investigation and assistance on domestic violence, she noticed that some Muslim women in Hong Kong were suffering from domestic violence because they were thought to brought shame to the family and community . She began to focus on their situation and try to connect with them. At the beginning she realized that Muslim women who had experienced honour-based violence, although they may not understand “honour-based violence” as an umbrella term, were able to share awareness of certain violence and poor power positions, while they also had a lot of confusion about marriage, sex and romantic relationships. Dr. Raees Baig then set up a workshop to give these women a platform to share their experiences and gender equality ideas, allowing them to connect the concepts and terms to their own experiences and identities.

However, the younger generation who have been subjected to honour-based violence are no longer passive victims, they have escaped from the official ideology through the internet and self-study of the Qur’an, and have learned about the political and religious contexts of their experience and many notions of gender equality. They try to escape their families or teach their families the new ideas they have embraced, in order to change the awful father-child relationship.

When asked if the project had helped to heal and empower the women victims, Dr. Raees Baig thought that it was important to give people who had experienced honour based violence or domestic violence more space to share their experiences, which helped them to realize and understand their situation. She also felt that their project has gone some way to challenging the global victimizing discourse of Islamic women by giving these women themselves the opportunity to speak about their effort to change the situation.

Written by: LI Xiangyi

A guidebook focusing on Honour-Based Violence (HBV) was shared in the seminar in order to address the issue of HBV of young Muslim women in Hong Kong. Their HBV experiences were revealed in the booklet, aiming to explore the way they interpreted their experiences in religious and cultural perspectives, and promisingly, initiating discussions and concerns on HBV cases in Hong Kong.

The seminar is facilitated by Dr. BAIG Raees Begum and moderated by Prof. CHENG Sea Ling in a Questions & Answers approach. Dr. BAIG first shared about the motivation behind the project, their interests in investigating how the young Muslim women perceive phenomenons such as domestic violence, HBV, forced marriage in their own words. Surprisingly, the younger generation has more thoughts on differentiating their culture and religion; they also have stronger mobility on their Muslim identities and their personal autonomy when comparing to the older generation who refused to relate themselves to sexual topics.

Dr. BAIG further explained the use of the word ‘honour’ and the underlying reason for young women being the agent of change but not victim-survivors of HBV. The ground of honour is strongly correlated with pride and reputation, in social contexts, on the other hand, honour also refers to standards and behavioural guidelines encouraged by the community. In fact, Dr. BAIG revealed that young women exposed to HBV are not only perpetrated by their father or other male relatives, female members sometimes play an assisting role in the process of HBV. HBV is therefore notably family-based in Islam culture.

Nonetheless the traumatic stress experienced by the young women, Dr. BAIG mentioned they expressed a longing for rebuilding their family’s relationship, breaking through these down the ages, agony family dynamics. With an eye to leap forward the family hierarchy, those brave women tried to regain their dignity in becoming a change agent instead of labelled as victim-survivors in their situations. They further share their self exploration process through this project to break the original Muslim teaching myth, meanwhile fighting for their identity of being a Muslim.

Written by: LI Yeuklam

The seminar on Oct 5th has been successfully held. Compared with the previous seminars, this one has some special components. First is the orientation of Gender Research Center. The GRC is an organization specializing in gender issues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Prof. Lynn demonstrated the academic and practical achievements of the GRC by presenting the center's past research projects, book publications, workshops, and other activities and it was committed to recruiting members for this seminar. The second part is Dr. BAIG Raees Begum’s sharing of her 2-year project of the honour-based violence (HBV) focus on the non-Chinese Muslim young women in Hong Kong, also the publication of the guidebook based on the real experience and cases of the HBV investigated in this project.

What motivated Dr. Baig to conduct this project must be recalled from a social work experience that took place several years ago. At the time, Dr. BAIG was cooperated with one local NGO to work on domestic violence. During the work, they discovered that the situation could be religious and cultural ways. Although the previous generation of non-Chinese Muslims living locally in Hong Kong may not understand the ture meaning of the academic terms like “domestic violence” or “forced marriage”, they can express this sentiment in their own language. However, the young female generation, with the fully understanding of these term, strong self-identity, and highly opening thoughts of ideal relationship, tend to use their own voices to challenge the rigid culture. These young females started to subvert abuse and the inequalities they feel within their families. Hence the initial phase of this product: to create a platform for them to talk more about these concepts on gender issues.

Moving to the topic of “women as agents of change”in this scenario, Dr. Baig explained that from the interacting with these girls they really see how the girls grew up, how they changed their self-perceptions and how they changed their families, even if they were experiencing abuse and violence. Women in the domestic violence isn’t victims anymore, we can see how they breakthrough these situations and some of the cases the girls even developed the capacity to educating they parents and rebuild family bonds.

In summary, HBV is a form of family-based violence, and in Hong Kong society today, neither social work nor the legal system has a good solution to HBV and a host of other problems such as physical control and forced marriage. On the one hand, society should build on this, but on the other hand, we should also see how women in such domestic violence gradually developed to find their own way to defend themselves.

Written by: QIAN Xiaoxuan

21 Sep 2022 (Wed) Daughters’ Dilemmas: Family Strategies of Highly Educated Rural-Urban Education Migrants in Hubei Province, China

Prof. SIER Willy, in her talk, revealed how female university graduates, as the first and only bachelor’s degree holder in her rural family, experienced various intersecting social processes that were shaped by both the structural condition of China’s social transformation and their dual roles, i.e., the role of daughters in the rural household, and the role of migrant female university graduates working in the city. The author conducted ethnographic research in Hubei province, one of China’s ‘big education provinces’ with rich educational resources and a huge number of university students. With the rapidly changing conditions in rural China and the expansion of China’s higher education system, university enrolment by young women of rural origin has increased exponentially. However, these young female ‘education migrants’ continue to struggle with the exclusion of rural citizens in cities and the entrenched patriarchal family culture in rural China. They are expected to use their gender and educational achievements to provide support to their families through their urban earnings and marriage. For instance, in one of the two cases that the speaker showed, the respondent’s mother required her to get married soon to somebody with a high bride price in order to finance her brother’s marriage. This case also revealed that those highly-educated female migrants’ contributions to their rural households resulted from elaborate negotiation processes with their family members. Additionally, the study emphasized that those highly-educated female education migrants from rural China are not a homogeneous group: one respondent was keen to pursue a career and maintain her independence, while another expressed her desire to help strengthen both her own and her family’s social and economic standings through marriage. Overall, gender, rurality, and migration are indicated to put multi-pressure on female university graduates from rural backgrounds, and their ‘education migration’ brought their intense negotiations with rural households, which reconfigure the gendered household dynamic in rural China.

Written by: GU Yuxuan

On September 21st, the Wednesday Seminar was successfully held, presented by Prof. Willy Sier, the assistant professor of the anthropology department of Utrecht University who has lived in mainland China for seven years.

Prof. Sier's pointed out that expanding urbanization and higher education opportunities have made education increasingly crucial for rural families. Hubei, a wealthy province with a well-established higher education system, was attracting an increasing influx of education migrants. During Prof. Sier's fieldwork in Wuhan between 2015-2017, she spoke to several young, first-in-the-family, highly educated women who face the dual pressures of their families and city lives. Prof. Sier deemed that their contribution to families goes beyond the existing literature, including the sacrifice of economy, emotion, and even personal desire.

Prof Sier discussed two case studies. One was Julia, who came from a single-parent family and took on much of the responsibility of supporting her mother's retirement and her brother's marriage after graduation. Faced with her mother's urging for marriage, Julia doubted the necessity of getting married as a city woman and believed that marriage might deprive her of the legitimacy of raising her family of origin as a rural daughter. Professor Sier argued that this case showed how the identity and mobility brought by educational migration give rise to complexity in gender roles, marital relations, property distribution, and kinship in rural Chinese households.

The other was Misty, an interlocutor who graduated from a junior college. Misty returned to her hometown and entered an unromantic marital relationship after the challenging career choice and financial crisis after graduation. This case prompted Prof. Sier to reflect on how inflation in higher education has caused a gap between employment choices and career dreams, especially for women with rural backgrounds.

Prof. Sier observes that almost every interlocutor shows ambitions in the future while diligently navigating a social landscape in which their positions are shaped by gender, educational achievements, and rural status, as well as societal structures, including marriage and labor markets. From the Pandemic to today, Prof Sier remains in contact with interlocutors remotely. Although these cases may not be representative, Prof Sier believes these anthropological studies provide academic value in understanding how intersecting social structures have shaped the lives of the increasing number of young women with higher education backgrounds and shifted dynamics in their rural families.

Written by: HUANG Minyan

The research is based on the background of rural labour migrants. Young people from rural backgrounds increasingly moved to cities by enrolling in universities due to land consolidation, low pay for working in leading local enterprises, and the explosive growth of the Chinese higher education system. Professor Willy Sier examined how higher education affected university-educated daughters in rural households of their employment prospects, but also how this made sense within broader gender ideologies and labour market contexts.

She argued that highly educated young women contribute to the family in a way that goes beyond what we know from the literature as they contribute financially and emotionally and sometimes even sacrifice their ambitions to contribute to the family projects, such as helping their brother marry. She showed two cases.

First is Julia's story; being the only person in a family with a degree, she feels responsible for ensuring her brother's and mother's life. She cannot consider getting married because she thinks it's unfair for her husband and child to continue supporting her original family. Julia's case connects two sets of questions, those about the emancipating potential of higher education for young women and questions about daughters' role in rural Chinese households. It is often suggested that education is an important tool for promoting gender equality. But we see that Julia's achievements and energy are directed towards securing property for her brother and that she continuously needs to prioritize her family's needs over her desires.

The second case is Misty. Misty puts family needs ahead of her own emotional attachments when choosing a mate. Working in a factory had been an essential part of the marriage negotiation because being an accountant made her also an attractive person to marry into this family that had a factory. But her dream is to be a teacher, and don't want to work in a factory.

Their educational trajectories have always been important to them. However, they also navigate a social landscape in which their positions are shaped by their gender, educational achievements, rural status, and societal structures, including marriage labour markets.

Written by: JIN Shuyi

14 Sep 2022 (Wed) The Cultural Politics of Intimacy: A Methodological Experiment

Researchers tend to encounter difficulties when it comes to knowledge of how inequality affects the intimacy of the socio-economically marginal people. This presentation tries to figure out this problem by introducing a methodological experiment. The speaker, Prof. SUN Wanning from the University of Technology Sydney, addressed how she conducted this experiment by analyzing the contrasts, coalition, convergence and collaboration of the discursive relationships in social media, popular culture, and public criticism.

Generally, it is challenging to carry out conventional ethnographic researches when ethnographers seek to know how China’s rural migrants experience their intimate and sexual lives. Because there are methodological difficulties in investigating one’s negative love life and documenting their “dark intimacy.” Prof. SUN attempts to offer a new solution to this obstacle with a methodological experiment: to study a wide range of textual materials, by contrast, coalition, convergence, and collaboration. Her material sources include state media, labour literature, sweat-shop management’s statements, statements in an NGO’s newsletter, etc. This kind of experimental methodology dialogues with the absence of first-hand ethnography. Making good use of the narrative nature of ethnography, it regards the creators or gatherers of the textual materials as surrogate ethnographers. It thus puts forward a new concept, “‘second-hand’ ethnography” or “surrogate ethnography”.Instead of setting up a hierarchy of truthfulness, this new concept intends to ferret out the cultural politics through their discursive relationships. This experiment makes for a critical socio-economic framework in place of a normative framework of transgression. Whilst the latter one usually draws out legal or moral issues and leads to stigmatization and punishment, neglecting the emotional consequences. Prof. SUN also argues that it is socio-economic inequality but not a normative idea of moral capacity builds peoples’ abilities to reach out warm intimacy. Hence, it is of necessity to come up with such an approach.

Written by: DENG Zhuoyun

In the Wednesday Gender Seminar, held on September 14, 2022, Prof. SUN Wanning, from Media and Communication Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, shared difficulties she encountered in the process of ethnographic research and presented a special case which involved various discursive positions in series of textual materials, as a powerful solution to overcome the methodological troubles. By outlining her research trajectory, Prof. Sun mentioned that the socio-economic marginalised experienced intimacy as a new notion of ‘dark intimacy’ that is purchased, violent, or injurious. Since intimacies nowadays are public social goods that not everybody has equal access to and needs to invest bodily and emotional capital, it is crucial to consider how inequality marginal groups suffer impacts their love lives. Also, first-hand ethnology may confuse the researchers due to the private essence or absence of intimacy. This led to questions about how scholars should integrate and make sense of collected data in the cultural context. Inspired by Huang Yingying, Eva Illouz, and Judith Farquhar, Prof. Sun addressed that second-hand ethnology, or surrogate ethnology, can be helpful when treated as particular narratives rather than neutral documents. To be specific, Prof. Sun introduced a project about how Foxconn sex workers were represented in textual materials with varied positions, including commercial and state press, Foxconn management’s statement, their self-statement from NGOs, lowbrow magazines, and Dagong literature. Their attitude toward sex workers varied, and female workers’ motivations to become sex workers were depicted differently, mainly in two ways: a normative framework of transgression(legal and moral order) and a socio-economic framework(supplying the family's finical needs). Between texts, four relationships: collaboration, coalition, contrast, and convergence, emerged and mutually contributed to understanding which and how the latter framework, rather than the former, gets us closer to the consequences of inequality. Thus, Prof. Sun concluded that the experiment analysing clusters of texts and their conceded perspectives is necessary since it is inequality that shapes female workers’ capacity to achieve a warm intimacy, not the normative notion of moral competence. In summary, Prof. Sun highlighted the importance of understanding and being attentive to power relations in diverse texts. To Introduce and examine a series of cultural texts does not mean doubting whether the ethnology is authentic and establishing the hierarchy of truthfulness, but revealing the cultural politics through their relationships.

Writtern by: DU Ruini

The nature of intimacy, being private and obscured, often leads to the absence of first-hand ethnography. Dark intimacy that is purchased, violent, or injurious, poses a further methodological difficulty in the investigation. In this circumstance, a range of cultural texts contribute important ethnographic insights to Prof. Sun Wanning’s studies of the intimate lives of the marginalized. Considered as second-hand ethnography, the textual material is produced and mediated by a diversity of “surrogate ethnographers”, requiring a critical analysis in and among the texts, for instance, the discursive privilege they each possess, different agendas and readers, as well as the tension arising among them.

Prof. Sun examines various aspects of the texts and suggests four main discursive relationships: contrast, collaboration, coalition, and convergence. For example, contrast is reflected in the disparity between the narratives by different media. State media and commercial media adopt a normative framework in their commentaries on migrant women workers as part-time sex workers. The documented intimacy is simplified as a transgression, with what has truly constituted the women’s plights and decisions left undiscussed. Contrasting such an approach is a sex worker’s storytelling in an NGO’s newsletter, which offers a glimpse of a woman’s emotions, struggles, and the certain familial, political, and economic circumstances she faces to decide on her body and sexual capital. While in some literary works included in Prof. Sun’s studies, a different relationship defined as collaboration can be discovered. From novels depicting migrant workers’ dark intimacy to poems based on the real lives of sex workers, these texts approach the intimate lives of the marginalized from their own perspective instead of moral judgements, with the sensibility of the political and economic influences. These texts support and enhance the legitimacy of one another.

The normative framework of transgression neglects individuals’ dilemmas and the socio-economic contexts, typecasting and stigmatizing the marginalized. Prof. Sun thus argues for a critical socio-economic approach to intimacy that explains how socio-economic inequality pervasively affects individuals’ intimate lives, as well as the studies of the discursive relationships that contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of cultural politics.

Written by: FONG Yuk Ping

13 Apr 2022 (Wed) Mini-Conference of Thesis of MA in Gender Studies 2022

In the Mini-Conference on Apr 13, seven MA students from the Gender Studies Programme presented their thesis research projects.

Ms. DONG Xueyin analysed 392 blog posts from six Xiaohongshu fitness bloggers in terms of their adherence to postfeminist sensibility and involution. It was found that female bloggers talked more about gender inequality and expressed more anxiety under involution, while male bloggers used less postfeminist emotional labor and acted more in line with the requirements of involution.

Ms. GOU Xinning conducted a case study of HER fund, the only non-governmental women’s foundation in Hong Kong. From her participatory observations of HER fund’s workspace and activities, she found a flattened hierarchy among the staffs in HER fund and the visitors who joined their workshop. Besides, HER fund also created a warm, personal, and hospitable emotion culture and paid attention to intersectionality, by taking care of women from different backgrounds and inviting them to share their experiences.

Ms. LUO Xilu is conducting a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between online socialization and depression in youth from a gender perspective. By extracting the effect values from relevant empirical studies, she aims to understand to what extent and how online socialization may affect youth depression. She is currently working on the data cleaning procedure, and she hypothesizes that the effect would be moderated by the type of online social media and the background of youth subjects.

Ms. SUN Yining studied how families undergone demolition and relocation in rural China distribute their compensation properties to sons and daughters. Interviewing 18 families from the Li village of Shandong province, she found most parents still hold strong patriarchal beliefs and tend to distribute their houses to sons but not daughters. Her analysis provides theoretical and practical implications for discussing the impact of urbanization on patriarchy.

Ms. SHI Xinyu obtained secondary data and conducted in-depth interviews to study how Hong Kong-Shenzhen cross-border married couples undergoing prolonged separation, especially the wives, were affected by the social restriction policy during COVID-19. She categorized these couples into four types based on husband’s and wife’s career- vs. family-orientation. It was concluded that these women are facing increased domestic burdens in this period and the differences among the four types of couples reflect different levels of influence of individualism and familism.

Ms. YANG Zhiyu analysed secondary survey data and conducted in-depth interviews with women currently in a cross-border relationship, to examine their coping strategies and decision-making process for migration under the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the tied migration theory and relational turbulence theory as her analytical framework, she suggested that the policy-enforced separation closely related to challenges and conflicts in intimate relationships, and the different coping strategies reflected not only economic considerations but also the couple’s gendered beliefs and their relationship status.

Ms. ZHOU Shanshan analysed and compared the gender-related contents in two recent Chinese female animations, Green Snake and The Island of Siliang, to demonstrate how power and femininity perform and develop in Chinese animated films. She found that the female protagonists in both films showed a mix of traditional feminine and masculine characteristics but were interpreted differently by male and female directors. The female-directed animation The Island of Siliang depicted its female protagonist in an imperfect but more realistic way, while the one in the male-directed animation Green Snake appeared to be scantily clad with an exaggerated feminine body shape, reflecting the male gaze.

Finally, Prof. Ivy Wong, the MA programme director, commented that all the presented topics were very clear and interesting, and had covered a wide range of research areas with impressively diverse methodologies from case study to meta-analysis. She also encouraged the thesis students to aim high and consider getting their research published. Congratulations to the presenters and wish you all the best with your research projects!

Written by: Shi Yun

6 Apr 2022 (Wed) The affective practice of love: the imagined subjective protest body on LIHKG in Anti-ELAB Movement

Written by: ZHANG, Mengya

1月18日，Xie Kailing博士和Zhou Yunyun博士在线上性别研讨会上讲演了两人正在合作进行的研究——“恐育作为女权抵抗？中国网络空间中女性网民的生殖经验和话语”。两位研究者首先勾勒了研究所处的中国语境，中国独生子女政策使得女性获得高等教育的机会大大上升，虽然在全球范围内，妇女的教育程度与生育率呈负相关，但在中国，异性恋婚姻中女性养育子女仍旧是一种具有道德强制力的社会规范。两位研究者借用Evans所提出的“支离破碎的父权”（patchy patriarchy）这一概念，认为将女性生育职责“自然化”、“本质化”的话语仍旧具有某种权威性，成为国家推行政策时的话术，并在公共文化生活中，例如在售卖母婴用品的广告中被不断地生产和传播。随着出生率下降带来的老龄化危机的初现，自2021年起中国政府转而采取支持生育的政策，女性面临着愈发严峻的生育压力。而市场经济驱动形成的以欲望为核心的现代式的对“自我”的追求，以及中国近年来在年轻女性群体中愈发浩大的女性主义声浪则进一步成为引发女性在网络空间中关于生育激烈探讨的契机。为了探寻受过良好教育的年轻女性对这一生育困境的回应，以及网络空间在这种生育困境讨论中的作用，两位研究者对热度极高的豆瓣主题帖“生育对一位女性意味着什么”进行了的话语分析。在以主题式编码为主的初步话语分析中，研究者们发现大多数的话语都围绕着生育的消极体验及其作为一种“被掩盖的黑暗秘密”展开，并进一步展示了话语群中三个显著的主题：生孩子作为一种肉体和情感上的双重创伤；“丧偶式育儿”剥夺了女性的个体性；缺少女性中心的知识生产和对父权制结构的反思。在讲演的最后，研究者们进一步指出了这一现象的复杂性：回帖中没有出现明显的反对生育的声音，而是更多地集中在经验分享，给予建议和女性的不同的生育选择上，尽管帖子的发表者们并没有明缺自我表明女权主义立场的倾向，但她们关注和讨论着与女权主义紧密相关的议题。研究者们认为，网络空间提供了一种另类的公共空间，使得在社会空间中被迫静默的女性经验相互沟通，女性话语得以建构。

Written by: ZHENG, Lin

Spring 2022

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

16 Nov 2022 (Wed) The interplay between intimacy and commodification: Exploring family and work lives of lesbians in China

Written by: XU Yinuo

On November 16, the topic of professor LO’s speech was the interplay between intimacy and commodification by exploring the family and work lives of lesbians in China.

Written by: ZHANG Yue

Written by: ZHENG Lin

9 Nov 2022 (Wed) Employing domestic workers and gender gap in domestic labor among working parents: An effective strategy?

At last Wednesday seminar, Prof. Adam Cheung presented his research on how live-in foreign domestic workers (FDW) help reduce unpaid domestic labor for dual-earning parents in Hong Kong.

Written by: TANG Xiaolei

Employing foreign domestic workers and gender gap in domestic labor among working parents: An Effective Strategy

Written by: ZHANG Mengya

All in all, I really enjoyed this seminar and it gave me a lot of inspiration for my research.

Written by: ZHANG Xunyue

5 Oct 2022 (Wed) Gender Research Centre Orientation Talk: Honour Based Violence: Minority Women As Agents of Change

Written by: LI Xiangyi

Written by: LI Yeuklam

Written by: QIAN Xiaoxuan

21 Sep 2022 (Wed) Daughters’ Dilemmas: Family Strategies of Highly Educated Rural-Urban Education Migrants in Hubei Province, China

Written by: GU Yuxuan

Written by: HUANG Minyan

Written by: JIN Shuyi

14 Sep 2022 (Wed) The Cultural Politics of Intimacy: A Methodological Experiment

Written by: DENG Zhuoyun

Writtern by: DU Ruini

Written by: FONG Yuk Ping

13 Apr 2022 (Wed) Mini-Conference of Thesis of MA in Gender Studies 2022

In the Mini-Conference on Apr 13, seven MA students from the Gender Studies Programme presented their thesis research projects.

Ms. DONG Xueyin analysed 392 blog posts from six Xiaohongshu fitness bloggers in terms of their adherence to postfeminist sensibility and involution. It was found that female bloggers talked more about gender inequality and expressed more anxiety under involution, while male bloggers used less postfeminist emotional labor and acted more in line with the requirements of involution.

Ms. GOU Xinning conducted a case study of HER fund, the only non-governmental women’s foundation in Hong Kong. From her participatory observations of HER fund’s workspace and activities, she found a flattened hierarchy among the staffs in HER fund and the visitors who joined their workshop. Besides, HER fund also created a warm, personal, and hospitable emotion culture and paid attention to intersectionality, by taking care of women from different backgrounds and inviting them to share their experiences.

Ms. LUO Xilu is conducting a meta-analysis to explore the relationship between online socialization and depression in youth from a gender perspective. By extracting the effect values from relevant empirical studies, she aims to understand to what extent and how online socialization may affect youth depression. She is currently working on the data cleaning procedure, and she hypothesizes that the effect would be moderated by the type of online social media and the background of youth subjects.

Ms. SUN Yining studied how families undergone demolition and relocation in rural China distribute their compensation properties to sons and daughters. Interviewing 18 families from the Li village of Shandong province, she found most parents still hold strong patriarchal beliefs and tend to distribute their houses to sons but not daughters. Her analysis provides theoretical and practical implications for discussing the impact of urbanization on patriarchy.

Ms. SHI Xinyu obtained secondary data and conducted in-depth interviews to study how Hong Kong-Shenzhen cross-border married couples undergoing prolonged separation, especially the wives, were affected by the social restriction policy during COVID-19. She categorized these couples into four types based on husband’s and wife’s career- vs. family-orientation. It was concluded that these women are facing increased domestic burdens in this period and the differences among the four types of couples reflect different levels of influence of individualism and familism.

Ms. YANG Zhiyu analysed secondary survey data and conducted in-depth interviews with women currently in a cross-border relationship, to examine their coping strategies and decision-making process for migration under the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the tied migration theory and relational turbulence theory as her analytical framework, she suggested that the policy-enforced separation closely related to challenges and conflicts in intimate relationships, and the different coping strategies reflected not only economic considerations but also the couple’s gendered beliefs and their relationship status.

Ms. ZHOU Shanshan analysed and compared the gender-related contents in two recent Chinese female animations, Green Snake and The Island of Siliang, to demonstrate how power and femininity perform and develop in Chinese animated films. She found that the female protagonists in both films showed a mix of traditional feminine and masculine characteristics but were interpreted differently by male and female directors. The female-directed animation The Island of Siliang depicted its female protagonist in an imperfect but more realistic way, while the one in the male-directed animation Green Snake appeared to be scantily clad with an exaggerated feminine body shape, reflecting the male gaze.

Finally, Prof. Ivy Wong, the MA programme director, commented that all the presented topics were very clear and interesting, and had covered a wide range of research areas with impressively diverse methodologies from case study to meta-analysis. She also encouraged the thesis students to aim high and consider getting their research published. Congratulations to the presenters and wish you all the best with your research projects!

Written by: Shi Yun

6 Apr 2022 (Wed) The affective practice of love: the imagined subjective protest body on LIHKG in Anti-ELAB Movement

During the Wednesday Gender Seminar held on April 6, 2022, Ms. WONG Ka Hei Cecilia, MPhil student of Gender Studies Programme, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shares her research project on the discursive practice and gendered negotiation on LIHKG forum in Anti-ELAB Movement.

Drawing on various disciplinary approaches and methodological tools, Ms. WONG adopts a research assemblage strategy including media and digital ethnography, thematic discourse analysis, 4 rounds of semi-structured interviews, and 3 follow-up individual interviews. Since the situated experiences of LIHKG user’s gendered affective practices are multilayered and multifarious, this seminar challenges the monolithic and overarching conception of a coherent heterosexual protest body and provides an alternative interpretation of how individual bodies negotiate with the collective in-process during everyday resistance.

While the fantasized couple and heteronormative division of labor donate a sense of affective coherence to the contradictory nature of protest subjects (Berlent, 2012), the research found that each individual body is a dynamic nexus full of heterogenous gendered experience. To view the gendered subjective protest body as a site of fractures and openings that are full of possibilities, as Ms. WONG concludes, is the core of understanding the dynamic process of negotiation, and thus the affective practice of love.

Written by: Zhang Yuqi

30 Mar 2022 (Wed) Analyzing Female-Victim Intimate Partner Homicide in China via Hierarchical Models and Data Mining Methods

In the Wednesday Seminar on 30 March, Ms. Yuxuan Gu, an MPhil student from Gender Studies Programme and the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared her research on “Analyzing Female-Victim Intimate Partner Homicide in China via Hierarchical Models and Data Mining Methods”.

Although the overall trend of the homicide rate in the world seems a declining one, intimate partner homicide (IPH), especially female-victim intimate partner homicide (FV-IPH), shows its stability. In China, among the couples who filed for divorce cases because of domestic violence, up to 91.41% of the perpetrator were male. Built upon this contextual background, Ms. Gu’s study proposes a theoretical account integrating the traditional ameliorative and backlash theses, offers a possible explanation for some of the inconsistent findings, and provides empirical examination in mainland China.

Ms. GU selected 11,310 intentional homicide cases from the China Judgments Online website and used hierarchical models and data mining methods to conduct the analysis. The findings illustrate that: 1) in terms of the instrumental dimensions of gender equality, the backlash processes are likely to dominate at lower to higher levels of women empowerment; 2) the relationship between the cultural dimension of gender equality and levels of FV-IPH conforms to an inverted U, such that a backlash effect operates in the short-term but is followed by an ameliorative effect in the longer term. By leveraging detailed information on 11310 homicide cases, this study pioneers the analysis of FV-IPH in mainland China. It presents researchers with an effective method of utilizing text-mining techniques and hierarchical models which explore the integration of structural gender equality and incidental level characteristics.

Written by: SUN Yining, SHI Xinyu

23 Mar 2022 (Wed) Gendered Market Activities among Female Entrepreneurs in China: Case Study from Two Inland Provinces

In the Wednesday Seminar on March 23, Ms. Lulu Li, Ph.D. candidate from Gender Studies Programme and the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared her research on “Gendered Market Activities among Female Entrepreneurs in China: Case Study from Two Inland Provinces.”

Driven by the “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” campaign in China since 2016, the development and prosperity of private businesses and start-ups in China has brought unprecedented opportunities for female entrepreneurship. However, entrepreneurship has traditionally been androcentric, and the opportunities for entrepreneurship are unevenly distributed between inland and coastal regions. Against this backdrop, Ms. Li proposes the research question of “what are the motivations for female entrepreneurs to enter private business, and what kind of gendered opportunities and difficulties do they encounter when doing business in the local market”.

Drawing on 41 in-depth interviews with female entrepreneurs in small and medium cities, the research shows that for female entrepreneurs motivated by economic aspirations, some are “confident” to start the business with access to local resources and family support in a rising local market, while others are “aspiring” but lacking local networks and facing marriage stress. For females who become entrepreneurs due to family considerations, some of them try out new business opportunities “comfortably” with sufficient emotional and financial support, while others enter their business “serendipitously” in a familiar place because they want to realize their self-value and be filial at the same time. These findings imply that personal career aspirations and family concerns are key factors influencing the entrepreneurial motivations of women in inland cities. These women are adept at exploring different market opportunities and mobilizing multiple local resources to achieve business advancement and self-realization. Compared with women in developed regions, these inland women entrepreneurs who run businesses in a relatively conservative social environment have constructed their unique forms of entrepreneurship in which gender, class, and locality are intertwined.

Written by: ZHOU Siyuan, GU Yuxuan

16 Mar 2022 (Wed) Becoming Insurance Agents in Hong Kong Career Choice and Social Mobility among Highly Educated Women from Mainland China

At the Wednesday Gender Seminar on March 16, Ph.D. candidate Ms. ZHOU Siyuan from the Gender Studies Programme and Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong brought her sharing. Her dissertation title is "Becoming Insurance Agents in Hong Kong: Career Choice and Social Mobility among Highly Educated Women from Mainland China." The insurance industry is very mature in Hong Kong, which has attracted many highly educated women to migrate to Hong Kong from mainland China, engaging in this industry. To explore the gendered opportunities and challenges they encountered, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 32 women working in the industry at various career stages and ethnographic observations at insurance agents’ offices, and during their daily and recruitment activities to explore their motivations to enter the insurance industry and how they were recruited. At the same time, the researcher is also studying how the insurance industry combines femininity and professionalism.

The recruitment process includes two dimensions, institutionally and individually. New IANG graduates who enter the internships and trainee programs build up connection with professional financial advisors and access to diversified training contents at the institutional level.

The recruitment at individual level is conducted through social networking like “港漂圈”, hometown associations, and alumni organizations. WeChat and Red are the common platforms to build women’s professional image as insurance agents.

In fact, women are more than welcome for they are considered to be more independent, patient, and thoughtful. Women utilize cross-border information and resources due to their Mainland identity. They are motivated by personal career aspirations and family support. However, they face double marginalization. First, gender discrimination harms women’s career mobility. The second is geographical as they are female immigrants, which is an excuse for different treatment between the locals in the workplace and them. In short, women still face structural inequalities in the workplace due to the patriarchal gender division of labour.

Written by: DONG Xueyin, YANG Ming

9 Mar 2022 (Wed) Single-Sex Schooling and Students’ Interpersonal Development

Ms. SHI Yun Sylvia, Ph.D. Candidate in Gender Studies Programme presented her research on “Single-Sex Schooling and Students’ Interpersonal Development” at the Gender Seminar on Wednesday, March 9th.

As a form of institutionalized gender segregation, single-sex schooling was initially set up to make up for girls' lack of education or secular reasons. Nowadays, this form of schooling remains common and resurges in recent years.

However, single-sex schooling is a controversial education form. Some people argue that it benefits both boys and girls from different perspectives. Others disagree with the supportive claims.

By reviewing developmental intergroup theory and peer socialization theory, Ms. Shi’s research aims to answer the following research questions: do single-sex and co-ed students differ in gender-related cognitive outcomes? Do single-sex and co-ed students differ in same gender and other gender relationship outcomes? Would such differences (if any) change after graduation when students enter a mixed-gender world?

Regarding the cross-sectional study, there are two participant samples, including boys and girls from local single-sex and coeducational schools. The first group involves 2059 students recruited from HK high schools, and the second includes 456 students from local universities. The former finishes questionnaires in class, whereas the latter in the laboratory. About the measures, the higher level of gender salience is reported in the single-sex high school sample. In addition, the single-sex school sample reports having lower percentages of other-gender friends and close friends as compared to the coeducational school sample. What’s more, single-sex high school and college students feel more mixed-gender anxious, except for that the difference between college samples is not statistically significant.

In the longitudinal study, two time lines were set, namely the final year of high school and after graduation. The time interval between the two time lines was 16.62 months. The sample was drawn from more than 100 local high schools in Hong Kong, and the measures includes demographics, gender salience, and gender stereotyping. This study shows that gender segregation in single-sex schools affects students' gender cognition and entails social outcomes, including stereotyping, friendship, and sexual orientation. Although these effects diminish over time, students in single-sex schools have fewer social skills in mixed-sex life after graduation. Many questions remain to be answered about the impact of single-sex education, especially on students' non-academic outcomes.

Written by: GAO Xinning, ZHOU Shanshan, ZHANG Kunyu

16 Feb 2022 (Wed) Politics of Dating Apps

CHAN Lik Sam, assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, presented his research on "Politics of Dating Apps" via Zoom online lecture at the Gender Seminar on Wednesday, February 16th.

Using in-depth interviews and critical methods, Prof. CHAN Lik Sam had deep-going conversations with friends around him who use dating apps, understood their motivations for using these apps, analyzed their experiences and feelings in using the apps, and focused on the explanations from users of dating apps. Finally, Prof. CHAN established the connection between dating apps and individual politics. He sees dating apps not just as a platform for romance or hooking up, but more importantly, as an arena to reembody gender and queer politics.

At the same time, Prof. CHAN draws on interdisciplinary literature on gender, homosexuality, and technology research to examine how dating app users take advantage of the technological capabilities unique to their social status. He proposed the "Networked Sexual Publics" as a unifying concept to capture the dynamics of emerging dating app culture, and suggested that scholars and students use thinking of intersectionality to further study this global phenomenon in the future.

He pointed out that we need to call for a fight for social rights. Spaces outside of the heterosexual community have already received a lot of attention through dating apps, and if online sex topics are latent, then building our identities through dating apps could lead to a more gender-equal and homosexuality-friendly world. Using apps to find "sex" for women, for example, is actually a way to help them learn about themselves.

Looking ahead to future research, Prof. CHAN believes that if we want to pay attention to people's different interpretations of dating apps or behaviors, we need to take an intersectional approach. In fact, every sexual public on the Internet has at least two identities -- male and female. We also need to consider factors such as age, urban and rural areas. These undiscussed intersections may affect users' use of the application, which requires further research and discussion.

Written by: LUO Xilu, GAO Yuting, XIA Mohan

19 Jan 2022 (Wed) Queering Chinese Kindship – Queer Public Culture in Globalizing China

The seminar is an eye-opening one and Professor Song Lin from the school of Journalism and Communication of Jinan University shared his study regarding Queering Chinese Kinship.

Queer is a terminology originated from the Western world and it is worth exploring whether the said terminology and definitions of queer are applicable in China who shares a quite different culture and history comparing with those western countries.

Professor Song’s study revealed that the queer definitions from the west may not fully applicable and adaptable for China while Professor Song has pointed out that Queerness is highly correlated with Kinship whereas these two components are shaping each other and formulating a dynamic process of Queering Kinship from a Chinese cultural context.

Professor Song’s has investigated the said topic in his recent publication of “Queering Chinese Kinship: Queer Public Culture in Globalizing China” through various case studies. In the captioned seminar, Professor Song has shared the case study of BiliBili to illustrate the characteristics of Queering Chinese Kinship.

BiliBili is a popular video sharing platform focusing on the youth market in China and there are quite a number of Chinese queers leverage BiliBili as the platform to come out and share their sexuality with the others. The study found out that the content and the approach of such videos are rather different from the westerners; the Chinese queer videos usually involve the queers’ partners as well as their families; such approach echoes the significance of the relationship between queers and kinship. The video contents, moreover, are packaged in a rather romantic and commercialized way to cultivate the interest followed by the acceptance from the public.

Professor Song also evaluated the comments from those anonymous audiences in a bullet curtain; it is found that the comments are all very encouraging and positive which helps reshaping the blood kinship relationships which used to be the first step to boost the acceptance level of queers in China.

It is a live example to manifest the inter-disciplinary nature of gender studies which we should stay cautious about the “one size fits all” approach without considering the local context especially gender is institutionalized through various historical, cultural, economic, and political factors.

It is no arguing that Professor Song brought us an insightful study, but some may challenge the representativeness of those case studies. Perhaps the hackathon approach advocated by Hope, D'Ignazio et al. (2019) can be applied for a deep dive analysis of the said topic and have the most oppressed marginalized group identified with their issues uncovered.

Written by:Hui Wai Hung, Ross

Spring 2021

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

17 Mar 2021 (Wed) Family Matters: Gender and Motivations in Women’s Online Entrepreneurship

In the Wednesday Seminar of March 17, 2021, Ms. TANG Lin, a Ph.D. candidate in Gender Studies Programme and the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared her ongoing Ph.D. research on how gendered experiences in relation to the family institution construct women’s motivations in online entrepreneurship in China.

The fast development of the Internet in the past decade has witnessed Chinese women’s greater participation in E-commerce compared to men. More than 50% of the business owners on Taobao are female (AliResearch 2015), and more than 70 % of the individual WeChat sellers are female (Xinmin Evening News 2017). In regard to entrepreneurial motivations, previous studies suggest while men are more economic oriented, women are more achievement-oriented and family-oriented. Women are more likely to venture into family-related businesses. Moreover, family-work dynamics are always important factors impacting women’s entrepreneurship. Family structure and composition also have a profound effect on the acquisition and mobilization of entrepreneurial resources for women entrepreneurs.

By in-depth interview and online ethnography, Ms. Tang Lin examined in her research women’s entrepreneurial experiences in relation to both their natal family and marital family The research subjects are mostly from a more privileged group: those well-educated young women who are the only child in their natal family and live in the more affluent eastern and southern coastal areas. A life-course perspective honoring four significant life events, namely university graduation, formal employment, cohabitation or marriage, and childbirth was adopted to offer a more dynamics-sensitive and multi-dimensional analysis on the comparatively high percentage of women’s participation in online entrepreneurship.

By using “pull” and “push” to structure her analysis, Ms. Tang Lin pointed out two pairs of effects to pull those privileged young women into online entrepreneurship or push them out from it, during the transition of their status. As urban singleton daughters, they were initially pulled into online entrepreneurship when they were graduating from their postgraduate programs. Becoming a dài-goù, namely doing surrogate shopping for others, was regarded as a spontaneous move to make up for their parents’ investments in their overseas tertiary education. However, after they graduated and came back to their hometown, the social expectation of stable and ideal jobs — such as public servants, teachers, administrative staff — for women started to push them out from online entrepreneurship. As they and their parents perceived, online entrepreneurship could only be a temporal and transitional option.

If the first pair of pull-push effects happened in their natal families, the second pair of effects emerged in their marital family or marital family-to-be. When they started cohabitating with their marital partners, they could be pulled into online entrepreneurship to make extra money, especially when their partners were financially insecure. However, the motivation of online entrepreneurship had nothing to do with women’s empowerment. Although some of their marital partners would do pep talks or offer physical supports to help them run their online business, the aim was pretty much materialistic. Once they got pregnant and had their own children, childcare obligations would push them out from online entrepreneurship. As Ms. Tang Lin observed, their motivation for online entrepreneurship decreased dramatically in this life event. For those who still insisted on, they had to juggle between paid work in the household and their online economic activities.

Written by:

Peng Yiyi & Wu Yuehan, PhD candidates of Gender Studies, CUHK

Marco Teng Wang, student of PhD in Linguistics, Hong Kong Baptist University

03 Mar 2021 (Wed) The Profile of Risk in Cervical Cancer Prevention in Southwest China

During the Wednesday Gender Seminar held on March 3, 2021, Ms. WU Yuehan, Ph.D. candidate in the Gender Studies Programme and the department of Anthology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shares her doctoral project on cervical cancer prevention in Chongqing, southwest China.

Ms. WU Yuehan characterize the case of China on cervical cancer prevention as “a mixed phenomenon of the Global North and the Global South”. Along with the rise of pharmaceuticalization of public health, HPV tourism from the mainland to Hong Kong emerges as a unique social phenomenon among women-patients-consumers. However, underdeveloped medical infrastructure, insufficient healthcare investment, and the collusion between Big Pharma and local government in China result in 1/5 of the total death from cervical cancer in developing countries. Ms. WU Yuehan identifies three prevention strategies to cope with the burden of cervical cancers with different agents at all levels, namely, government promotion, medical intervention, and individual participation.

As an anthropologist by training, Ms. WU Yuehan utilizes ethnographic methods by interviewing patients as well as professionals and observing their interactions at a local clinic in Chongqing, southwest China. Since government-subsidized screening tests for cervical cancer are only available for rural women with local residency during a specific period of each year, migrant workers are therefore left out of the precautions. Guided by a relational framework, Ms. WU Yuehan argues that, from an authoritative perspective, cervical cancer is the risk object which sets social development at risk. In this sense, cervical cancer is more of a cancer associated with social developments for female migrant workers from rural areas than economic property. Women patients who live with human papillomavirus (HPV) always experience HPV-attached stigma such as debauchery and promiscuity, concerns and suspicions from their sexual partners, and biomedical uncertainty of whether they are infected or if they can recover. Ms. WU Yuehan ends her talk by pointing out that it is women who are at risk from a bottom-up perspective since they are the host of HPV.

-- Written by TANG, Lin, PhD candidate of Gender Studies

20 Jan 2021 (Wed) A “Phoenix” Rising from the Ashes: China’s Tongqi, Marriage Fraud, and Resistance

At the Wednesday Gender Seminar held on January 20, Dr. Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang, Assistant Professor from the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong, shared her research on Tongqi in China conducted between 2015 and 2019. Tongqi refers to women who have unknowingly married closeted gay men and often discovered their husband’s secret after giving birth to fulfil filial piety. Dr. Tsang extended the concept of necropolitics and used ethnographic methods to uncover the social death situation of 59 Tongqi in Tianjin and Northeast China, and how they resist the circumstances with an agency.

Dr. Tsang first introduced her conceptual framework based on Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics. She expanded the concept, which refers to the situation of underprivileged groups waiting for death, due to the denial of legal support, cultural recognition and basic human rights, to explain the social death situation that these Tongqi live in. She pointed out that, however, there is still room for Tongqi to exercise their agency, as they seek divorce, medical treatment, help from NGOs and the Internet to survive and resist the circumstances.

In terms of getting a divorce, Dr. Tsang discovered that a majority of the Tongqi with a low level of education did not proceed to divorce and maintain the status quo because they are jobless, lack of money and constrained by the social stigma of divorce. On the contrary, Tongqi with more education attempted to either settle their divorce out of court or go to trial. While those seeking an out-of-court divorce face challenges of weaker social bonding, lower social status and less power, those who go to court experience frustration because the divorce law in China favours men in terms of custody of children, settlement of property and so on. However, battling for a divorce is a way for Tongqi to obtain dignity, to fight for justice and to escape the death of their heterosexual marriage identity in order to start a new chapter in life.

Dr. Tsang also talked about Tongqi who got infected with AIDS have been proactively seeking help from NGOs and the internet to demonstrate their agency. Despite feeling depressed and hopeless, the women look for medical treatment and try to overcome the hardships with the care and encouragement from their children and parents. Moreover, Tongqi approach NGOs for professional and legal advice. They also join different social media groups to get support from each other.

With her search, Dr. Tsang intends to provide insights for policymakers and NGOs to understand and support Tongqi, raise the consciousness of how flawed marriage law in China affect their lives and reduce stigmatisation of Tongqi and homosexual men who enter marriage to fulfil filial piety.

-- Written by LEE Man Ting and XU Ran, MA students of Gender Studies

Fall 2020

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme & Gender Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

18 Nov 2020 (Wed) “Little Bees Just Have to Keep Moving”: Temporary Work, Gendered Skills, and Excessive Mobility in Real Estate Sales Promotion in Urban China

At the seminar held on 18 Nov. 2020, Prof. ZHAN Yang from the Department of Applied Social Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University introduced some interesting aspects of the middle-aged women channel workers in Chongqing from her recent studies.

Channel worker as a job to promote real estate to potential customers has emerged with the real estate market expansion in China's second and third tier cities. Channel work appeared in Chongqing after 2012. Its emergence was mostly due to market competition: Once one real estate developer decided to use channel work to do sales promotion, then others had to follow suit. Prof. ZHAN Yang did her research mainly in the Liangjiang New Area of Chongqing, where she observed how those channel workers worked and conducted interview with them and also with a few of managers of the channel department and real estate developers. She found that most of the channel workers were middle-aged women from rural areas. To promote real estate sales through telemarketing, ground promotion, interception and group-buying, middle-aged women were recruited nominally for their gendered qualities such as "persistent", "hard-working", and "with thick skin". However, Prof. ZHAN Yang argued that the real central skills for this job were sales talk and movement, and the latter was what she stressed on.

The channel workers moved according to specific maps. The channel manager would determine the "stratified circles" of target customers and marked out the locations they could gather as the effective spots for channel workers to go. There was also a map of deals for the channel manager to detect changes in customers' demand in the market. The channel workers must constantly move as the maps were constantly changing.

In effect, the constant movement caused excessive mobility with a high rate of layoff and resignation. What those channel workers were doing was indeed redundant and futile work. Work had always been prioritized over other things. To shake up this fundamental assumption of work, the question drew the attention of Prof. ZHAN Yang was: Why work that does not really serve others' need exist? Though the answer remains to be revealed, for channel work, Prof. ZHAN Yang argued that while being redundant, it bore some functions of social protection. That might be the meaning for "little bees" to keep moving all the time.

Written by : Zhang Yu, MA student of Gender Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

11 Nov 2020 (Wed) Marriage as Filial Duty, Personal Choice or Social Expectation?: Exploring Differences in the Experiences of Single Women in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo

At the Wednesday Gender Seminar held on November 11, Professor Lynne Y. Nakano from the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong shared her research on single women in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Professor Nakano used anthropological research methods to interview single women in three cities. She analyzed and integrated the similarities of these experiences: on the one hand, they were expected to perform well in school and social work. On the other hand, they were expected to put family first. However, single women in the three cities face different situations under different social backgrounds.

Professor Nakano first introduced the essential characteristics of being single in East Asian cities and the general increase in the age of marriage for women. There are still low rates of premarital cohabitation, dating, premarital sexual relationship, and extramarital birth in the three cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Same-sex relationships are generally highly stigmatized. At the same time, with the expansion of job opportunities in the market, women tend to develop their careers. Marriage often makes women face discrimination and pressure in the workplace, so the fertility rate also decreases.

Professor Nakano then showed two social models of marriage, the Duty Model, and the Companionate Model. Her research found that Chinese society favours the duty model, Hong Kong society is a companionate model, and Japan is a hybrid model of the two. Therefore, getting married at the "right age" is a common choice for Shanghai women. Marriage is seen to be filial piety and the entry point for intergenerational care. Under the companion model in Hong Kong, marriage represents a personal choice, and the family environment allows them to remain single. Tokyo women usually choose to complete their marriage at the proper age expected by society, and they believe that marriage represents a social responsibility.

In East Asian societies, women still take the primary role of family caregivers. Single women also participate in family affairs and perform more family care responsibilities. Shanghai women will actively emphasize their contributions to the family and the nation to rationalise their singleness. Singleness in Hong Kong society does not cause moral condemnation, but women look after their families when they start to earn income. Tokyo women are proud of their economic independence, but they also see taking care of elderly parents as their moral obligation while childbearing is not necessary.

Professor Nakano also pointed out some existing problems for single women in the seminar. Firstly, since single women are expected to stay single temporarily, they often do not enjoy too much family resources support. Secondly, East Asian women staying single is not an expression of individualism, but a way to strengthen the entire family's economy and fulfil the social expectations of the family. They have undertaken most of the housework but have not received the financial support they deserve, which has exacerbated the uneven distribution of wealth. Finally, society still maintains a negative stereotype towards single women. They have to strengthen their contributions and invent new ways to fulfil their responsibilities for the family.

-Written by Lulu LI (PhD student), CHENG Siying (MA student) of Gender Studies Programme

28 Oct 2020 (Wed) Envisioning the City: Arts-based Research with Domestic Workers, Asylum-Seekers and Ethnic Minorities

In the Wednesday Seminar on Oct 28, Prof. Julie HAM, Assistant Professor of Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University, and Ms. Merina SUNUWAR, Research Assistant of Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University, presented via Zoom online lecture on “Envisioning the City: Arts-based Research with Domestic Workers, Asylum-Seekers and Ethnic Minorities.”

Through the analysis of participatory videos, two speakers worked on two art projects with domestic workers, asylum seekers and ethnic minorities: "Visualizing the Voices of Migrant Women Workers" and “Sustainable Sunday Couture: Domestic Workers Upcycling Fashion,” exploring the role of emotion in these two participatory projects.

Participatory video by communities rather than professional producers breaks down the power relations between participants and researchers and replaces them with “relational rhythms.” Prof. Julie HAM focused on two of the three dimensions in the project "Visualizing the Voices of Female Migrants": gratitude and trepidation, which were linked to the "chemistry between the participants and the organizers" and to the "re-writing the city", respectively. Ms. Merina SUNUWAR introduced domestic work, minorities in detail to us home participatory experiments detailly, analyzed effect of the role and the scene change, confirmed that the participatory test method can be further analysis of the urban residents new character dimensions (experiential dimensions), its purpose is not to reduce or alleviate useful tension, but to help urban residents to recognize and use this kind of relationship (emotional rhythms) when adapting to new roles. Prof. Julie HAM concludes that shifting power relations in participatory video can lead to new voices and stories coming to the fore, and these may continue to be transformed into knowledge being produced.

written by Wang Yming & Zhong Weiyan (students of MPhil & MA in Gender studies)

21 Oct 2020 (Wed) Premarital Abortion: Reproductive Politics in Post-Socialist China

In the online gender seminar on 21st Oct., Dr. LAI Yuen Shan Ruby, a Research Assistant Professor from Department of Sociology and Social Policy of Lingnan University shared her research on adult premarital abortion in China conducted between 2013 and 2019. In her research, Dr. LAI Yuen Shan Ruby used ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews to unravel the under-documented non-marital reproductive experiences of Chinese women, mostly migrants from less developed areas to an industrialized costal city, and also content analysis to examine the abortion cultural discourses in China.

According to Dr. Lai, adult premarital abortion is a window to investigate the interpersonal relationships that are entwined with the unmarried women, their intimate partners and parents in post-socialist China. These relationships serve as interfaces that connect the women’s reproductive selves to the macro social structures, and are interweaved in the lives of these women.

Under the universal project of living a “complete life”, factors leading to abortion vary from struggling between the girl and woman dichotomy, rejecting a hasty marriage, fear of single motherhood, pursuing a “nested birth” to expecting a quality child. The political propaganda of "You Sheng You Yu", the society's double expectations on women to be both an ideal female citizen and a virtuous mother, plus the celebration of the middle-class version of a harmonious family, overlap in the process of abortion decision-making.

For many women in Dr. Lai’s studies, they consciously define the premarital pregnancy as “the intimate trial” to evaluate their partners’ attitude towards the relationship, the maturity, reliability, and capability of serving as a future husband and a father. Even though men’s approval was crucial for continuing the pregnancy, their preference was not influential if the women did not want to carry on the pregnancy. The interactions of intimate couples during the pregnancy also reveal transgression of gender boundaries, for example, some men shouldered on the responsibility of domestic jobs and were also fragile during the abortion decision-making process.

Intergenerational interaction presents more dynamics in those women’s abortion decision-making process. Dr. Lai identified four patterns of parent–adult daughter interactions during the decision-making process of premarital abortion: excluding parents, referencing perceived parental views, consulting parents, and conforming to parents’ interferences. Her findings also suggest that some women have prioritized the preferences of their parents over those of their intimate partners because they consider intergenerational ties more enduring and reliable than ties between intimate partners.

Dr. Lai pointed out that within the context of a mature dating culture in urban China and the prevalence of premarital sex, women have achieved considerable control over decisions about sex and intimacy. But the unrestrained access to abortion is more an unintended benefit of the state’s modernization than a protection of women’s rights. While abortion is essential for women to exercise their bodily control and to survive in an increasingly uncertain and stratified society, it is insufficient for them to achieve reproductive autonomy.

The online seminar is part of the Wednesday Gender Seminar series co-presented by Gender Studies Program and Gender Research Centre, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

(Written by Wang Teng and MA student Yi Xueman of Gender Studies)

14 Oct 2020 (Wed) Email Order brides under China’s Global Rise

In the Wednesday Seminar on Oct 14, Prof. LIU Monica, Assistant Professor of the Department of Justice and Society Studies, University of St. Thomas, presented via Zoom online lecture on “Email Order Brides under China’s Global Rise”, a research project she has been working on since 2008. In-depth interviews and participant observations were conducted with 61 Chinese women who seek marriage with Western men through online dating agencies. By comparing the life trajectories and decision-making process of three cases, Prof. LIU illustrated how women in different socio-economic status envision Western men differently and how the privilege of modest-earning Western men is being challenged under China’s economic rise.

According to Prof. LIU, these women are mostly divorced, who have shared desires for out-migration marriage but with different motives and outcomes. Some of them are “financially flexible” but lose confidence in Chinese men and therefore turn to the foreign marriage market for “true love”, but discovered that the available Western men do not meet their expectations in either physical appearance or masculine charisma. Some of them are “financially burdened” and wish to improve their life quality through migration marriage, but ended up with an unhappy marriage or with sacrificed power and agency to have their marriage worked out. However, the Western men who order Email brides are relatively homogenous as they are in agriculture, manufacturing, and small business, left behind by globalization, incompetent in the local marriage market, and therefore look for women who fit their traditional gender beliefs via online dating agencies, but becoming less attractive to upper-middle-class Chinese women. The shifting configuration of global capital with the rise of China and other Asian countries, as Prof. LIU concluded, has challenged the hegemonic power and privilege of Western masculinity, and it is important to adopt an intersectional approach in future analyses of migration marriage.

(Written by PhD student Shi Yun and MA student Lee Man Ting of Gender Studies)

23 Sept 2020 (Wed) ‘To Shine’ or ‘To Die’?: ‘Womenomics’ and Women’s Worth to the Economy in Neoliberal Japan

On Sep 23’s Wednesday Seminar, Prof. HO Swee-Lin, an associate professor of anthropology at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore, shared her research on ‘To Shine’ or ‘To Die’?: ‘Womenomics’ and Women’s Worth to the Economy in Neoliberal Japan via Zoom online lecture.

Based on individual interviews and participants-observations with more than 180 women in supervisory and managerial positions in Japan, Prof. HO investigated whether and how does Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s “womenomics” programme exacerbates women’s inferior and marginal status at the workplace as well as in the Japanese society?

According to Prof. HO, the Japanese government's economic plan which nominally aimed at creating a society where ‘All Women Shine' has actually turned women into economic tools. In the mass media, negative portrayals of professional women still persist. In the company of co-workers, female managers need to cost their own time and expenses in after-work drinking in order to secure their job position. However, job promotions often bring them more workloads and limited authority. In the office, women are the most vulnerable to sacrifice in corporate restructuring, they are more likely to take part-time jobs than their male counterparts. To the state, the new legislation on bulling and harassment in the workplace also contribute to the increased discrimination against female employees. In short, neoliberal economic changes in national policies and corporate workplaces have failed to truly liberate Japanese women with professional careers, but “enacting prevailing gender roles and reinforcing patriarchal structure”.

(written by PhD student ZHOU Siyuan and MA student GENG Siran, LIU Lianxian of Gender Studies)

Spring 2020

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

4 Mar 2020 (Wed) 耽美真人CP與自我規訓式審查

As an adaptation of online teaching in the current Coronavirus situation, Gender Studies Programme in The Chinese University of Hong Kong held an online Wednesday Gender Seminar on March 4, 2020. Wang Yiming, an M.Phil student from the programme, shared with the audience about her research on Tanbi CP and the online self-disciplinary censorship in China.

Tanbi is regarded as a subculture in which the male-to-male love stories are mostly written by and for female audiences in China. Wang Yiming took the Sina Weibo platform, a large social media platform in China, as her field site. She studied the Tanbi group that was suppressed and reshaped by online censorship on Weibo, and explored the interactions among online subculture, the impact of online censorship on it, and the new creation of this subculture. This research fills the gap in the complex relationship and representation between opposing network groups, and reflects on the impact of online censorship on the cultural ecology of Tanbi in Asia. 228 audiences registered and participated in the seminar, which reached the peak of Wednesday Gender Seminar participation.

26 Feb 2020 (Wed) Desire for Sale: Live-streaming and DIY Pornography among Chinese Gay Micro-celebrities

On Feb 26's Wednesday Seminar, Dr. SONG Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow from the Department of Communication, University of Macau, shared his research on live streaming and DIY pornography among Chinese gay micro-celebrities via ZOOM online lecture. Through a cultural and media studies approach, Dr. Song explores the development of the underground gay porn "industry" in China, the socio-political circumstances it is situated in, as well as its negotiation with China's Internet governance.

According to Dr. Song, the Chinese DIY gay porn has been largely facilitated by the development of social media, especially the popularization of live-streaming platforms. Also, the nebulous nation of Internet communication has enabled tactics to circumvent strengthened censorship. Applying a queer Marxist analytical framework, Dr. Song addresses Chinese DIY gay porn as an economy centered on desire. While it is a profit-oriented product that completely follows the capitalist logic, it is simultaneously produced at the margins of heteronormativity, state regulation, and corporate capitalism, with the potential to subvert the existing dominant order.

Fall 2019

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2 Oct 2019 (Wed) Refusing obliquely: On siren eun young jung and the three moments of performing in anomaly

During the Wednesday Gender Seminar on Oct. 2, Prof. Soo Ryon Yoon, an assistant professor from the Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, shared her research on South Korean media and visual artist siren eun young jung and her work Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008-).

Yeoseong Gukgeuk (Women's National Theatre Performance), a form of theatre with all characters played by female actors, used to be the most popular art form in the 1950s' Korea but gradually declined partly due to its inherent tension with the heteronormative logic underlying the state's imagination of "true" national heritage.

Siren eun young jung, a Korean artist, has spent years to conduct a series of archival research-based installations and performances about Yeoseong Gukgeuk. Through close reading of jung's works and from the perspective of queer politics, Prof. Yoon analyzes the strategy in her Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project to play with and within the existing normative institutions of South Korea theatre rather than denying them. Highlighting three themes in jung's acts of intervention, i.e., the archival, the tradition, as well as gender and queer politics, Prof. Yoon explores how jung's project has interrogated the nationalized and heteronormative theatre history and opened up new possibilities to resurrect queer presence in theatre.

11 Sep 2019 (Wed) The performative effects of diagnosis: thinking gender, sexuality, and intimacy through diagnostic logics and politics

On 11 Sep’s Wednesday Seminar, Dr. Sebastian Mohr, Senior Lecturer of Gender Studies and Director of the Centre for Gender Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden, shared his research on the performative effects of medical diagnosis. Dr. Mohr is also a visiting scholar at the Gender Studies Program at CUHK during the fall of 2019.

Based on the ethnographic research on Danish war veterans’ understandings of and experiences with intimacy, Dr. Mohr discussed how medical diagnosis transform people’s perception of their intimate self as well as how the medicalized intimacies provide potentials to rework biopolitical and cis- and heteronormative normalcy.

*For more information concerning Wednesday Gender Seminars, please click here.

TANG, Lin

Spring 2021

Co-presented by: Gender Studies Programme, Gender Research Centre & Sexualities Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

17 Mar 2021 (Wed) Family Matters: Gender and Motivations in Women’s Online Entrepreneurship

Written by:
Peng Yiyi & Wu Yuehan, PhD candidates of Gender Studies, CUHK
Marco Teng Wang, student of PhD in Linguistics, Hong Kong Baptist University

在2月15日的週三研討會上，來自香港中文大學社會工作系的戴海靜教授分享了名為“獎懲或需求：中國三種勞動制度中的家庭照料責任與求職”的研究。戴海靜教授採用定性與定量混合方法，對香港、深圳國有單位、深圳私營企業三地人力資源從業者進行問卷調查與訪談，以探討雇主如何評價及對待承擔不同家庭照顧責任的男性與女性求職者。研究發現，強調能力、競爭力與效率的新自由主義市場機制，注重家庭責任的中國傳統道德體系，父權制框架下的性別規範與性別分工，以及勞動者權益保障政策與家庭福利政策的結構性資源與約束，四種機制共同作用，導致家庭照料責任對就業與職業發展產生性別化影響，並在三種不同勞動制度下有所區別--就香港這一自由經濟體而言，男性會因承擔家庭照料責任而獲益，而與之相反的是女性求職者所面臨的母職懲罰；對於經歷疫情後經濟衰退的深圳私營企業，出於對效率的強調，承擔家庭照料責任對男性和女性求職者都將面臨更多質疑；而獎懲之說似乎並不適用於強調集體效能的深圳國有單位。
Written by: GU, Yuxuan

如何兼顧工作與照顧兒童、長者等家庭成員，向來是個讓人頭疼的問題。本港街頭及媒體不乏照顧者的廣告，有的來自非政府組織，有的則是政府宣傳，無一例外均是呼籲公眾多關心和支援家庭照顧者。
香港近年接連有照顧者懷疑不堪壓力，釀成倫常慘案。有鑑於此，當局由本年度起，展開為期三年的宣傳活動，舉辦照顧者為本的計劃和公眾教育項目。大中華地區乃至全亞洲的家庭照顧者危機，可見一斑。
本次分享的戴海靜教授指出，箇中原因或許與人口老齡化、勞動力短缺、少子化、女性覺醒有關。而新冠疫情下，幼稚園等暫托機構遭勒令關閉，照顧的責任再次落到家人（尤其是女性）的身上，照顧者危機進一步惡化，亟需更多關注。
以往一般認為，母親的身份在職場構成劣勢甚至懲罰，具體表現為薪酬的性別不平等。市場認為照顧者缺乏競爭力，對女性照顧者的歧視尤為明顯，而目前的研究較少從僱主的角度開展，戴教授認為這是學術方面缺失的一環，因此決定由此出發，採用基於履歷表的調查，配以訪問等方法，研究三個不同的市場領域，即香港以及深圳的公私營界別。
本港有較完善的福利制度，奉行不干預的新自由主義，而且1997年主權移交後出現了儒家思想復興，更重視家庭。分析數據後，戴教授發現本港職場不論公私界別，都認為照顧家庭是美德，也是可靠的象徵。然而，僱主仍然不偏好母親，因而她們在零售業等初級職位較受歡迎。在評判男性工作能力時，僱主多以專業為標準，而對女性則會同時考慮工作專業以及照顧職責。相比兒童照顧者，僱主更願意聘請長者照顧者，他們不覺得這是歧視，因為他們認為當母親是個人選擇，照顧長者則不是。香港僱主普遍不歡迎延長產假和帶薪家庭假，認為家中長者及兒童等應該由老人院舍等機構照顧。
據我個人了解，近年不少港人外移，本港多個行業確實正面對人力短缺問題，當局曾表示釋放女性勞動力是可行方向，有社企更專門協助「全職媽媽」，以彈性工作模式重返職場。
而在深圳，私人企業普遍追求利潤，往往忽視保護勞動權益。僱主認為照顧者對工作並不用心，不歡迎兒童、長者的照顧者，不論性別，都充滿敵意，不過大公司會較寬容。深圳私企認為員工應該自己找人照顧家人，例如祖父母，也認為照顧責任是家事，基於公私分明的原則，不應在職場提起。他們認為市場應該不受管制，更明言從不理會勞工法例，否則沒有公司能營運下去。在僱主眼中，二孩、三孩政策破壞勞動市場，認為給照顧者提供現金資助是政府的責任，而不是企業本身。
相比之下，深圳的政府和事業單位等公營市場，情況則更有意思。鐵飯碗不怕丟，不過薪酬較低。僱主對於員工的評核，並非以個人為單位，而是看整個團隊，重視團隊精神及意識，強調和諧、互惠、合作，而非競爭，也恪守勞工法例，尊重員工的各種需要，包括照顧家庭的責任。僱主不歡迎45歲以上沒有家庭照顧責任的人選，有的尤其不喜歡30歲左右沒有孩子的女性。政府及事業單位認為，女性員工若希望懷孕，應該有計劃、按部就班，否則產假期間無人可以頂替工作，大失預算，因此他們不喜歡員工沒有提前通知便突然懷孕。總之，他們認為員工應該知道，要鐵飯碗，便要有很多的權衡取捨，譬如低薪、生孩子要「排隊」。
戴教授認為，日後的研究應更關注勞工制度、僱主的想法、社會福利制度。家庭究竟是公共抑或是私人領域？我們的社會需要的是更好的父母或是更好的僱主、體制？照顧責任應是一體的、協調的，僱主也應當參與其中，讓兩種「生產」（創造production與生育reproduction）不再對立。
Written bu: CHEN, Shujun