Politicizing Motherhood

For today's reading, I thought Politicizing Motherhood by Xiaolan Bao was interesting because it illustrated the change in economic structure of the Chinese community by the Chinese women. In some of the readings we have read in class, women were portrayed as rather powerless and lower-class compared to men, staying indoors taking care of the family and the house. However, this article depicts the changes the Chinese women have made economically, culturally, and the image of themselves. Although many Chinese men were employed, the women were looked at as an important role in the families because of the employment benefits they could provide (health insurance) from the garment industry. The increased responsibilities won them growing respect from their parents, children, and other family members.
Not only that they supported their families, the women got together to campaign for Daycare centers. These women established numerous meetings and gave reports of the difficulties working-class families face due to the lack of childcare facilities in the community, which showed the rest of the world their strong sense of family obligations. It is surprising how much work and effort they put into this while working and providing for their family.
How the women were portrayed in this article was very similar to Stillman's article, because they both tell their stories with women in the foreground. Stillman illustrated the importance of women in the Hawaiian hula culture, because they preserved, maintained, and passed on the tradition and knowledge from generation to generation. Similarly, Chinese women in the garment industry were important, for they changed the economic structure of their community and the gender roles in many Chinese immigrant working-class families. Without their strength, the daycare activists wouldn't have been able to gain much additional credibility to challenge the authority of their community and the union. It seems like not much story is told on the positive contributions women have made in the past, and this article made me want to know more about women's roles and other examples of impacts they have made.