How did the Urban Experience of Chinese Women Change overTime?

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How did the Urban Experience of Chinese Women Change overTime?
The Chinese have undergone changes, both drastic and gradual over time to achieve social and economic development. Specifically, the Chinese urban woman has had various experiences aligned with the changes in the economy and society as a whole. The urban woman is a term used to describe women who are independent when it comes to decision-making and reside in cities because they either work there or their husbands work there(Zuo).Different eras have dictated what a woman’s role in society should be and what she should set to achieve in her life. For instance, the status of the urban woman in China has been affected by the reform era, an observation made by Sun and Chen (1091), indicating that the growth of the urban Chinese women has stagnated as a result of the reforms. The modern urban Chinese woman’s view on beauty, marriage, and life, in general, is different from the one held by urban women in the Mao era. There have been changes in employment opportunities and labor input, child care, and marriage over time. This paper focuses on how the above-mentioned aspects of women in China’s urban cities have changed over time.
Child-Care
Primarily, the responsibility of child-care belongs to women among the Chinese. Therefore, it is important to consider how the experiences of urban women have changed with regard to child-care over time. During the Mao era, the State relieved women the burden of child-care by implementing programs that funded child-care (Du and Dong 132). These programs were put in place to ensure that women were able to participate in the labor market because, during the era, women and men were the same. As such, having child-care programs ensured that child-care was not preventing women to do what men were doing in terms of contribution to the economy. Urban women had the opportunity of taking their young children to kindergartens and nurseries that were publicly funded to ensure that children were well prepared before joining primary schools, and shift the burden of care from women (Du and Dong 133). As a result, China became one of the countries to have a high women participation in the labor market among its counterparts in the developing markets during the era (133). While the promotion of equality among men and women contributed to the increased labor participation by women, the extent of participation could not have been so pronounced if programs for child-care were not implemented. This is because, without the programs, women would have either opted to delay childbirth or forego paid work so as to take care of their child since they are the primary caregivers. Urban women were also provided with paid maternity leave and their employers had to provide them with rooms for breastfeeding. Further, urban women whose employers had no child-care programs were supported by the neighborhood committees (Du and Dong 134). As such, urban women during the Mao’s era were able to participate in the labor market without having to compromise on childbearing and care, something that the modern woman has to do due to lack of a solid child-care support system.However, women were...