I found it ironic that Chinese women were considered to be so far underneath men in status, when they facilitated the economic boom and reevaluated the gender roles in the Chinese community. In Xiaolan Bao’s article “Politicizing Motherhood”, Bao talks about the influx of Asian immigrants after the Second World War. At that time, women were still considered lesser than men and especially in the Chinese society and culture, so they were pushed into the background. Quite literally Chinese women worked in the back of restaurants and small stores that their husbands ran. There were limited job opportunities for Chinese women, and the garment industry was the best option. Bao lays out all of statistics in how the gender ratio of Asian men to women grew enormously after WWII, and consequently how the number of Chinese women involved in the garment industry in New York grew just as quickly.
What I found interesting was that this industry exploded because of the prejudice against women within the Chinese society, but ended up being one of the most lucrative jobs and created a new family dynamic. Children looked to women for food and care, men began to become threatened by women’s financial abilities/security, and the family dynamic adapted to these new lifestyles. It’s truly amazing that the initial gender inequalities and disequilibrium was eventually eradicated by the work that women had been forced to do by those gender norms. I suppose being forced into those gender norms provoked a necessity for change by the women. Its empowering to think that women who were so historically lesser than their male counterparts could break through that stereotype and create a new male to female dynamic. Even though they were discriminated against for being Chinese and for being Women, they managed cause a cultural change that has lasted (and continued to evolve) to the present day.
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