Modernisation and Gender: education and employment in post‐Mao China

The article explores the impact of the modernisation drive in education in post‐Mao China on the education and employment of women. It argues that the market forces unleashed in the Chinese economy, after the death of Mao and the rejection of his policies, have affected women's education and employment adversely. The rhetoric of modernisation when linked to the logic of the market in a political context where the state does not countenance opposition, and an emerging civil society that is only just beginning to establish itself, leads to women being disadvantaged in new and significant ways. In both education and employment, women are being disadvantaged. Traditional values regarding the roles that women play in society, that had never been confronted by the communists under Mao, are being used to marginalise women in the areas of education and employment. Women are putting up resistance, but in the context of political control by the'Communist Party, this is a difficult task.