Gender Division of Labour: From human to silkworm in sericultural practice

Silkworm raising and silk processing were conventionally regarded as women’s work in agricultural practices in ancient China, while contemporary gender division of labour in this field maintains this stereotype and witnesses more nuanced inequality in domestic and institutional settings. Meanwhile, although domestic silkworms in the sericultural industry won’t be differentiated by sex except for reproduction purposes, silk spun by male silkworms are concerned as of better quality by biologists, who thus worked on the feasibility of raising male-only silkworms exclusively. Male-silk products aim to meet the high-end demand for luxury silk products in the international market, while those unwanted female silkworms were made to die in the embryo by breed selections. This paper questions the genetic suppression of female silkworms and the constructed knowledge of masculine silk of premium quality, and thus shows how sexist ideologies are intentionally copied and imposed into the silkworm community to serve humans’ pursuit of cultural capital. Female silkworms thus suffer double oppression of sexism and anthropocentrism, which poses challenges to formulate trans-species ethics of care in both agricultural labour and scientific studies.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Feixuan Xu

Conference

Publication date: September 2021

Publication date (Print): September 2021

Pages: 220-225

Affiliations

[0001]School of Creative Media

City University of Hong Kong

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/POM2021.29

SO-VID: d4bf3499-f8ba-4c80-b353-d08d266f15e8

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of Politics of the Machines - Rogue Research 2021

Conference acronym: POM 2021

Conference number: 3

Conference location: Berlin, Germany

Conference date: September 14-17, 2021

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: debate and devise concepts and practices that seek to critically question and unravel novel modes of science

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM2021.29

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

P Bourdieu (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia UP.
F Bray (1997) Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
G Chen (2013) Males’ Leaf-picking in ‘Pictures of Tilling and Weaving’. Chinese Literature and History, 09, 81–84.
S Chen, X He & X Chen (2004) Research on Multiplication Techniques of Male Silkworm. Bulletin of Sericulture, 2, 34–36.
J Donovan & C Adams (eds.) (2007) The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.
D Haraway (1988) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14 (3), 575–599.
S Harding (2004) A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory’s Controversiality. Hypatia, 19 (1), 25–47.
V Held (2006) The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
M Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
V.A Strunnikov (1995) ’Genetic Engineering in the Silkworm’, in V. A Strunnikov (ed.) Control over Reproduction, Sex and Heterosis of the Silkworm. New York: Harwood Academic. 105–223.
Y Wang, X Zhu, K He, J Xia & Q Meng (2016) A Review and Prospect on Breeding and Industrialization Application of Male Silkworm Varieties in Past 20 Years. Science of Sericulture, 42 (2), 189–195.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] P Bourdieu (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia UP.

[2] F Bray (1997) Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[3] G Chen (2013) Males’ Leaf-picking in ‘Pictures of Tilling and Weaving’. Chinese Literature and History, 09, 81–84.

[4] S Chen, X He & X Chen (2004) Research on Multiplication Techniques of Male Silkworm. Bulletin of Sericulture, 2, 34–36.

[5] J Donovan & C Adams (eds.) (2007) The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

[6] D Haraway (1988) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14 (3), 575–599.

[7] S Harding (2004) A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from Standpoint Theory’s Controversiality. Hypatia, 19 (1), 25–47.

[8] V Held (2006) The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[9] M Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

[10] V.A Strunnikov (1995) ’Genetic Engineering in the Silkworm’, in V. A Strunnikov (ed.) Control over Reproduction, Sex and Heterosis of the Silkworm. New York: Harwood Academic. 105–223.

[11] Y Wang, X Zhu, K He, J Xia & Q Meng (2016) A Review and Prospect on Breeding and Industrialization Application of Male Silkworm Varieties in Past 20 Years. Science of Sericulture, 42 (2), 189–195.

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