
Dagongmei in south China
Last week, The People’s Republic of China celebrated the 60th anniversary of its successful revolution. To commemorate the occasion, the Empire State building was aglow with the red and yellow of markings of the Communist Party. This, in itself, is not overly spectacular, since the lights regularly highlight days of importance for other nations. What is more interesting, are the implicit subtleties.
It is no secret that the endeavors of the Empire have been made possible in whole by the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, to the extent that they have paid heavily into the US Treasury in the wake of the “crisis” of globalized capitalism. It should equally be no secret that our era of insatiable consumerism has been built upon the low-cost Chinese labor force. And cheap labor is almost always gendered in the feminine.
Before the era of “reform,” there is no way that this could have been possible as there was no such thing as gendered labor. All workers were regarded as the genderless gongren, working people. Official rhetoric told women that they could hold up half the sky, and they were expected to do just that (often with disastrous results). But then, things began to change. The role of women (d)evolved from unspecified comrades to subordinates. They became dagongmei, little sisters who sell their labor. The new identity is not only gendered, but it also designates status, since a little sister is explicitly single and younger. Their employment is regarded as temporary, with the tacit understanding that the job is only designed to last until they found a husband. Like their labor, their lives are transient – most of the dagongmei are migrants from the rural reaches of China.
The individual reasons for migration are as diverse as the cultural bodies coming into the export processing zones, their migration patterns forming their own transnational communities within a singular border. Some are environmental refugees, others are looking for an escape from village life. Some are fleeing forced marriages. Others go to the factories to send back remittances so that their siblings can get an education that has potentially been denied to them, or to fund their own educations. Ultimately, the goal is the same. To produce. The result is also ultimately the same – the social and ideological conditions which led to their migration are reproduced by their labor for continuing generations.
While the factories are producing the various commodities, they are also (re)producing an equally commodified hyper-sexualized femininity. This commodified identity that seems to go hand in hand with the schizophrenic logic of capitalism, the logic of an episodic and contradictory existence that is required to be a good cog in the great social machine. This logic is particularly interesting, and contradictory, in China since the nation is still to some extent guided by Marxist principles.
In exchange for their time, migrant women receive discipline in submission and training in urban modernity so that they may change their social registration ironically, through marriage. Only this time the marriage is to a modern urbanite, rather than a village boy. This matters because social services and potential jobs derive from the locale in which an individual’s home is registered.
Dagongmei are encouraged by both their peers and aspirations to spend their salaries on make-up, clothes, and public socializing. The ideological subtext is that sexualization and modernization will allow them to escape the stigma of backwardness attached to a rural upbringing, cushou cujiao, (rough hands, rough feet), which is a decidedly unfeminine trait. Or so the ideologies say. To be free meant to become more feminine. “Gender became a means of discipline and self-discipline, invoked so that they (dagongmei) would learn to police themselves. The feminine was not only imagined and inscribed but also self-desired. Objectifying and self-subjectivizing became the same process.” These contradictions inherent to the identities of the dagongmei, are at the center of the dialectical nature of Chinese women’s labor under the schizophrenic logic of capitalism. Whereas social conditions encourage labor outside of the home, the only labor available is that which will ultimately result in a return to the “acceptable,” domesticized, labor of the home. The result is that the dagongmei become acculturated to the ideological demands of capitalism, that women’s labor be understood as temporary and of a lower standard.
The benefit of such contradictions are that they present the opportunities to organically develop a more liberated consciousness that cannot be enforced by the top-down methodology used by the Party in its past social experiments in revolutionary society. Is the Party creating the paradoxes so that the people will resist and resolve themselves in such a way as to be in line with the ultimate goals of their society? Maybe, but at what cost? Where will the long march of ideology from gongren down to dagongmei lead? Will they bring their rough hands and feet with them?
(Photo Credit: Libcom.org)
Hi Vanessa,
I can’t open any of the hyperlinks except the first one. Perhaps that is just my computer?
Also, I say this to everyone who uses the term “schizophrenic” in a derogatory way, please don’t do that! It is a serious illness and using it as a negative adjective is degrading to the people who suffer from it. Just like you wouldn’t call something “retarded” or “gay”……
I really like your ideas about the contradictions in female labor practices in China. I wonder if these contradictions are a common phenomenon in patriarchal, capitalism societies? Then again, even in pre-industrial Europe in the late Middle Ages it was common practice for rural families to send their daughters into urban area to work, unpaid as servants in rich families. Their reward for working for several years would be that the rich family would provide their dowry when they got married in their mid-to-late teenage years. Adult women also came to cities for this purpose (and did domestic or sex work). So I’m thinking that the transition from rural to urban life, and the practice of entering the workforce with the intention of using it to acquire a husband and then leave the workforce, are not phenomenon unique to capitalism. The main thing this seems to have in common with your China example is a patriarchal order that pressures all women to end up under the control of a husband. I have heard it’s not even that uncommon in the US for young women to go to college with the explicit goal of finding a husband and leaving school/work. So I guess I’m wondering if you think this is really about capitalism?
Thanks for your comment Laura.
First of all, I understand your initial concerns as I am intimately associated with both categories used as examples and would equally be upset if the situation were different. The word choice of “schizophrenic” was very purposeful for two reasons. First, the OED cites one of the definitions as a state with the implication of mutually contradictory or inconsistent elements. Also this serves as adaptation of Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony and ideology within a capitalist state. So even though the word is very loaded, it is technically a correct usage. But, I will try to qualify the statement more when I use it in future articles of the series.
Your second point is a good one. Is it exclusive to capitalist ideology? I don’t think so. In my mind at least, the situation we are talking about is exasperated by the conditions of capitalist labor – particularly in that the dagonmei identity is so intimately related with the commodification of their labor and their sexuality. While the circumstances are certainly not new, it took China’s shift toward more capitalist policies to actually create the new identity category. Additionally, the shift created new migration patterns and classifications, both of which are relevant to the existence of dagongmei. One of the themes I will be pursuing in future editions is going revolve around the question of why capitalism specifically requires temporary labor that is both gendered and sexualized.
Dont worry, I cannot open the hyperlinks either. Other than the first one, they are all actually academic citations. You can see the content at the bottom of your browser if you mouse over the link. I will see if that can’t be fixed though.
Thanks so much for your reply. I look forward to your future postings- I don’t know much about labor and gender in China, besides the incessant talk about women in sweatshops, so I’m sure it’ll be very enlightening for me- thanks!
[…] It is in this context of value, that the Wall Street Journal’s attention comes back into focus. Why would the bourgeoisie who leaf through its pages care about rape, let alone the rape of an anonymous woman in China? The story is more than just a retelling of a method of masculine disciplining of the woman at the heart of this story. At the periphery are the dagongmei. […]
[…] have left their homes in the rural reaches of the nation in search of an education. Like their little sisters, they flow from potential job to potential job in search of the job that was said to await them. […]