Holding down half the sky: female knowledge workers and flexible employment in China&apos;s publishing conglomerates

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Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Volume 9, Issue 2

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Holding down half the sky: female knowledge workers and flexible employment in China's publishing conglomerates

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Author(s): Jin Cao , Graham Murdock

Publication date (Print): Winter 2015

Journal: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

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Abstract

Drawing on surveys and in-depth interviews with educated women working in the contemporary Chinese publishing industry, this article details the deterioration in their living and working conditions produced by the combination of conglomeration within the industry and the erosion of the state-supported welfare system. It pays particular attention to the role of flexible employment practices and revised organisational hierarchies in reshaping their work to fit the contemporary market for cultural production. These innovations, it is argued, have created more precarious working conditions, devalued their labour and left them less protected and more exploited.

Content

Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (doi): 10.13169

Journal ID (publisher-id): workorgalaboglob

Title: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 1745641X

ISSN (Electronic): 17456428

Publication date (Print): Winter 2015

Volume: 9

Issue: 2

Pages: 14-35

Article

Publisher ID: workorgalaboglob.9.2.0014

DOI: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.9.2.0014

SO-VID: 71e2bce6-b525-4e01-9dd2-43c6ea2140d3

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All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

References

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Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of the Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting , New York: Basic Books.
Bian, Y. & J. Logan (1996) ‘Market transition and the persistence of power: The changing stratification system in China’, American Sociological Review , 61:739–58.
Boutang, Y.M. (2012) Cognitive Capitalism , Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cao, J. & S. Han (2008) ‘The copyright trade in the Post-colonial context: A case study of a science and technology publishing house in Shanghai’, Chinese Publishing , 31 (6):31–35.
Castells, M. (2000) Rise of the Network Society . 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Dal Maso, G. (2015) ‘The financialization rush: Responding to precarious labour and social security by investing in the Chinese stock market’, Southern Atlantic Quarterly , 114 (1):47–64.
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Eisenstein, Z. (1998) Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy , New York: New York University Press.
Fang, Y. & A. Walker (2015) ‘Full-time wife' and the change of gender order in the Chinese city’, The Journal of Chinese Sociology , 2 (4):1–19.
Fitzgerald, S.W. (2012) Corporations and Cultural Industries: Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation , Lanham: Lexington Books.
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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Banks, M. & K. Milestone (2011) ‘Individualization, gender and cultural work’, Gender, Work and Organisation , 18 (1):73–89.

[2] Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of the Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting , New York: Basic Books.

[3] Bian, Y. & J. Logan (1996) ‘Market transition and the persistence of power: The changing stratification system in China’, American Sociological Review , 61:739–58.

[4] Boutang, Y.M. (2012) Cognitive Capitalism , Cambridge: Polity Press.

[5] Cao, J. & S. Han (2008) ‘The copyright trade in the Post-colonial context: A case study of a science and technology publishing house in Shanghai’, Chinese Publishing , 31 (6):31–35.

[6] Castells, M. (2000) Rise of the Network Society . 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

[7] Dal Maso, G. (2015) ‘The financialization rush: Responding to precarious labour and social security by investing in the Chinese stock market’, Southern Atlantic Quarterly , 114 (1):47–64.

[8] Davis, D. & F. Wang (eds) (2009) Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China , Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[9] Eisenstein, Z. (1998) Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy , New York: New York University Press.

[10] Fang, Y. & A. Walker (2015) ‘Full-time wife' and the change of gender order in the Chinese city’, The Journal of Chinese Sociology , 2 (4):1–19.

[11] Fitzgerald, S.W. (2012) Corporations and Cultural Industries: Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation , Lanham: Lexington Books.

[12] Gill, R. & A. Pratt (2008) ‘In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work’, Theory, Culture and Society , 25 (7–8):1–30

[13] Hardt, M. & A. Negri (2009) Commonwealth , Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[14] Hilferding, R. (2007 [1910]) Finance Capital , London: Routledge.

[15] Horkheimer, M. & T.W. Adorno (1973 [1944]) Dialectic of Enlightenment , London: Allen Lane.

[16] Huws, U. (2003) The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World , New York: Monthly Review Press.

[17] Huws, U. (2012) ‘The reproduction of difference: Gender and the global division of labour’, Work Organisation, Labour and Globalization , 6 (1):1–10.

[18] The International Herald Tribune (2012) ‘Holding up half the sky’, New York Times , March, 6. Accessed October, 14, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/world/asia/holding-up-half-the-sky.html.

[19] International Trade Union Confederation (2011) Living with Economic Insecurity: Women in Precarious Work , Brussels: International Trade Union Confederation.

[20] Kalleberg, A.L. (2009) ‘Precarious work, insecure workers: Employment relations in transition’, American Sociological Review , 74:1–22.

[21] Keane, M. (2013) Creative Industries in China: Art, Design and Media , Cambridge: Polity Press.

[22] Lee, C.-C., Z. He & Y. Huang (2006) ‘Chinese Party Publicity Inc' conglomerated: The case of the Shenzhen Press Group’, Media, Culture and Society , 28 (4):581–602.

[23] Lee, C.K (2008) ‘Workers and gender: Analysis on China from Western academia’. Accessed October 4, 2015 from http://www.sachina.edu.cn/Htmldata/article/2008/12/1600.html

[24] Lin, N. & Y. Bian (2002) ‘Introduction’ in Y. Bian, H. Lu & L. Sun (eds) Market Transformation and Social Stratification: American Sociologists' Analysis on China , Beijing: Sanlian Publication House:1–40.

[25] McKercher, C. (2008) ‘Working women: Gender, political economy and information age’, Paper presentation at the International Symposium on Technology and Institutions , Fudan University, Shanghai, June, 14–15, 2008.

[26] McKercher, C. & V. Mosco (eds) (2007) Knowledge Workers in the Information Society , Lanham: Lexington Books.

[27] McKinsey & Company (2012) Women Matter: An Asian Perspective. Harnessing Female Talent to Raise Corporate Performance , New York: McKinsey & Company.

[28] McLaughlin, L. & H. Johnson (2007) ‘Women and knowledge work in the Asia-Pacific: Complicating technological empowerment’, in C. McKercher & V. Mosco (eds) Knowledge Workers in the Information Society , Lanham: Lexington Books:249–66.

[29] Morini, C. (2007) ‘The feminization of labour in cognitive capitalism’, Feminist Review , 87:40–59.

[30] Riskin, C., Z. Renwei & L. Shi (eds) (2001) China's Retreat from Equality: Income Distribution and Economic Transition , New York: M.E. Sharpe.

[31] Ross, A. (2008) ‘The new geography of work: Power to the precarious?’, Theory, Culture and Society , 25 (7–8):31–49.

[32] Ringen, S. & K. Ngok (2013) ‘What kind of welfare state is emerging in China?’, Working Paper, Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.

[33] Schiller, D. (1999) Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System , Cambridge: The MIT Press.

[34] Standing, G. (1999) ‘Global feminization through flexible labor: A theme revisited’, World Development , 27 (3):583–602.

[35] Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class , London: Bloomsbury Academic.

[36] Stanworth, C. & J. Stanworth (1997) ‘Reluctant entrepreneurs and their clients: The case of self-employed freelance workers in the British book publishing industry’, International Small Business , 16 (1):58–73.

[37] Thompson, J. (2010) Merchants of Culture , Cambridge: Polity Press.

[38] Van der Zwan, N. (2014) ‘State of the art: Making sense of financialization’, Socio-economic Review , 12:99–129.

[39] Walby, S (2011) ‘Is the knowledge society gendered?’, Gender, Work and Organization , 18 (1): 1–29.

[40] Webster, F. (2006) The Theories of the Information Society , 3rd ed., London and New York: Routledge.

[41] World Bank (2013) Data: GINI Index , Washington, DC: World Bank.

[42] Xiao, Y. & F.L. Cooke (2012) ‘Work-life balance in China? Social policy, employer strategy and individual coping mechanisms’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources , 50:6–22.

[43] Zhao, Y. (2000) ‘From commercialization to conglomeration: The transformation of the Chinese press within the orbit of the party state’, Journal of Communication , 50 (2):3–26.