Time: 12:30 – 14:00

Venue: Chen Kou Bun Building 109 (CKB 109), CUHK

Speaker: Dr. Tangi PC YIP (Postdoctoral Fellow, Gender Research Centre, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CUHK)

Moderator: Professor Lynne NAKANO (Professor, Department of Japanese Studies, CUHK)

Abstract: 

This study explores how gender mediates marital home acquisition in the context of skyrocketing property prices and the persistence of traditional norms surrounding homeownership as a precondition for marriage and tying masculinity to marital home provision in Hong Kong. The results reveal divergences in gender values and practices, with some men abandoning homeownership and marriage altogether and some women viewing it as a form of old-age social security in the absence of marriage. For men who endorsed conventional housing and marriage norms, attempts to delay marriage until they were able to provide a marital home clashed with their female partners’ anxiety concerning culturally defined wifehood and motherhood clocks. This tension prompted some couples to make gendered compromises and collaborations to achieve the dual goals of homeownership and marriage. The results also highlight the housing burden and pressure of social reproductive norms faced by young people in contemporary Chinese societies and how young people reflect on and reconsider traditional gender norms and middle-class family ideals. The study indicates that traditional gender norms regarding marital home provision are either abandoned, challenged, compromised, or upheld, thereby reflecting an increasingly fragmented gender regime and internal tensions within contemporary Chinese society.

Speaker’s Biography: 

Dr. Tangi YIP is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gender Research Centre, HKIAPS in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include gender, marriage and family, housing and homeownership, and violence in cyberspace.

Language: English

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13696144