I. Gender and Japanese Companies as Uchi (Family)

A. Experience of uchi varies according to gender
B. Bank studied by Thomas Rohlen

1. Women leave employment upon marriage
2. 1/4 of the female workforce leaves each year
3. Underpaid, lack upward mobility
4. Less confined by company loyalty

C. Dorinne Kondo, Crafting Selves (1990)

1. Family-owned Japanese sweets factory
2. Artisans: apprentices, highly skilled, male
3. Part-timers: female
4. Most of the time, artisans and part-timers do the same tasks
5. Artisans have higher status
6. Female part-timers assert themselves as more senior women, maternal figures, but this reinforces their lower status as women

 

II. Chinese Family Businesses

A. Women's business networks: natal families, friends

1. Strong emotional ties
2. Fewer formal obligations

B. Women lack guanxi

1. Development of impersonal business ties
2. Weberian outcome, but not for Weberian reasons

 

III. Power, Money, and Markets in Vietnam

A. Conflict between family relationships and self-interest of marketplace
B. Traditionally, money may lead to power, but not prestige (kinship, religious ritual, scholarship, age, political office)
C. Gender dimensions of money and power in Vietnam

1. Market trade handled by women
2. Southeast Asian complementarity

a. Ancient Vietnamese society - bilateral
b. Men and women as two different halves of a whole
c. Men handle religion, ritual, politics
d. Women handle family finances, "general of the interior" (noi tuong)
e. Complementarity can involve inequality, as Brenner suggests

3. Confucianism

a. Chinese conquest in 111 BC
b. Ranking of occupations: scholar, peasant, artisan, and trader (si, nong, cong, thuong)
c. Self-reinforcing links between trade, gender, and low status

4. Competing explanations as discourses

a. Dominant explanation: women trade because of their low status
b. Brenner: women handle money because they have more self-control than men

D. Market-oriented reforms (1986-present)

1. "If the people are rich, then the country is strong"
2. Two possible effects on women

a. Expand business, get power
b. Glass ceiling

3. Conclusion: mixed results

a. Women's petty trade as discourse
b. Women own businesses, men as "just helping out"
c. Strategy to avoid taxes
d. Traders accumulate wealth, but can't openly display their success

4. Plans to build an international trade center

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu