Date: 15 Feb 2023 (Wed)

Time: 12:30 – 14:00

Venue: Chen Kou Bun Building 123, CUHK (In person only. No online link available.)

Speaker: Prof. DAI Haijing (Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Moderator: Prof. HAN Ling (Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Abstract:

In the global care crisis for young children and the ageing, the gendered impact of family care responsibilities on employment and career development of family caregivers has aroused much academic and policy attention, but there still lacks systematic and holistic investigation into the workplace discrimination against caregivers in different social contexts and the current discussion and advocacy are often constrained in the western framework of meritocracy.

Through mixed-methods data and the lens of comparative research, this study investigates how employers evaluate and treat male and female employees with various family care responsibilities in three different labor regimes of Chinese societies – the neo-liberal Hong Kong market under a productivist welfare system, the market-driven private sector of Mainland China struggling with post-COVID economic decline, and the state-supervised public sector of Mainland China with socialist legacies. 

We identified four sets of rationales among employers in the three labor regimes of China: a market meritocracy of competence, competitiveness, and efficiency; a moral virtuocracy of family care and responsibilities; a cultural schema of gendered division of labor; and structural resources and constraints embedded in labor protection and family welfare policies. The four sets sometimes corroborate but sometimes contradict one another in different employment contexts, based on which employers construct their evaluations of family caregivers in the labor market. At the core of the inquiries of the study are how the four sets of rationales interactively shape employers’ views and practices in different labor regimes in China, how the resulting struggles and dilemmas of employees with family care duties differ, and how social interventions that address the different sets of employers’ rationales produce varied outcomes in different contexts. Implications for thereotical development and policymaking are also discussed. 

Speaker’s Biography: 

Haijing DAI is an associate professor of social work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD degree in social work and sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research explores how gender and inter-generational dynamics in household division of labor, family care arrangement, and family life interact with socio-economic and welfare-system changes in Chinese societies, and how new patterns of stratification and inequality are constructed in these processes. Her articles have appeared in Social Service Review, British Journal of Social Work, Journal of Social Policy, The China Review, Social Forces, and Journal of Family Issues.

Language: English

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13660761