Gender-Based Employment and Income differences in Urban China

Gender-Based Emplo

y

ment and Income Differences in

Urban China: Considering the Contributions of

Marriage and Parenthood

Yuping Zhang and Emily Hannum

University of Pennsylvania

and

Meiyan Wang

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Working Paper Series Vol. 2005-25

November 2005

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and

do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

No part of this book may be used reproduced in any manner whatsoever

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The International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development, Kitakyushu

*The authors would like to acknowledge support for this project from the International

Centre for the Study of East Asian Development (Kitakyushu, Japan), in the form of a

grant that defrayed a portion of the costs for data collection for the China Adult Literacy

Survey and supported analyses of the data at Penn. The grant was entitled, “Life-Skills,

Schooling, and the Labor Market in Urban China: New Insights from Adult Literacy

Measurement.” The China Urban Labor Survey/China Adult Literacy Survey Project

was designed and conducted by Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese

Academy of Social Sciences, with principal investigators Cai Fang at Chinese Academy

of Social Sciences, John Giles at Michigan State University, and Albert Park at the

University of Michigan. Fieldwork was funded by the Chinese Academy of Social

Sciences, the Michigan State University Intramural Research Grants Program, the

University of Michigan, the Ford Foundation (Beijing), the World Bank, the Australian

Research Council, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, and the Weatherhead Center for

International Affairs (Academy Scholars Program) at Harvard University.



Gender‐BasedEmploymentandIncomeDifferencesin

UrbanChina:ConsideringtheContributionsofMarriage

andParenthood*

Yuping Zhang and Emily Hannum

Department of Sociology

3718 Locust Walk

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299

yupingz@ssc.upenn.edu, hannumem@soc.upenn.edu

Meiyan Wang

Institute of Population and Labor Economics

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

5 Jianguomennei Dajie

Beijing, China 100732

wangmy@cass.org.cn

Gender‐BasedEmploymentDifferencesinUrbanChina:The

ContributionsofMarriageandParenthood

Abstract

Market reforms in China have brought enormous changes to employment, most notably

the emergence of a competitive urban labor market. Researchers have argued that the human and

political capital disadvantages of women and new discrimination are important factors that

sustain gender gaps in the new urban labor market.

Analyzing a five-city urban labor survey, we show that gender disparities in human and

political capital fail to explain gender gaps in work status and income. Moreover, we find no

evidence of across-the-board discrimination against women. Instead, gender gaps in

employment and earnings emerge primarily among the married and parents, groups for whom the

gender gap in housework time is pronounced. Results suggest the need for further research on

family-work conflict.



1

Gender‐BasedEmploymentandIncomeDifferencesinUrban

China:ConsideringtheContributionsofMarriageand

Parenthood

Market reforms in China have brought important changes to employment, most notably

the replacement of the socialist job placement system with a competitive labor market, the

emergence of a private sector and privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the wholesale

appearance of the profit motive as an organizing feature in personnel decision-making. These

changes have stimulated a great deal of research aimed at understanding implications for social

inequality, with a key debate centering on a hypothesis that returns to human capital would

increase as the employment system more efficiently rewards talent (for a review, see Nee and

Mathews 1996).

Scholars have also linked market reforms to gender-based employment disparities. From

one perspective, the market system creates incentives to base employment decisions on proxies

for productivity, such as human capital, rather than ascribed traits such as gender. On the other

hand, past inequities in access to education and unequal access to political capital place women

at a disadvantage in a system that increasingly rewards human capital and still rewards political

connections. Moreover, privatization and the profit motive may have created incentives for

discrimination based on gender: managers now face stronger incentives than in the past to act on

perceptions that women’s home and family responsibilities make them less productive, and that

maternity benefits make female employees too expensive.



2

Making use of an extensive urban labor survey conducted in 2001, this paper considers

the scope of the gender gap in employment and earnings, then investigates possible explanations

for the gap. We evaluate potential contributions of a full set of indicators of human capital,

political resources, and family responsibilities to observed gender gaps. We argue that while

men enjoy advantages in human capital and political resources, and these factors are strong

predictors of labor outcomes, neither significantly explains gender gaps. Instead, results point to

the importance of family-work conflict: female disadvantages in income and employment exist

only for wives and mothers, controlling for other factors, and working wives and mothers spend

much more time on housework than do working husbands and fathers.

This paper begins with a brief summary of research on gender, family, and employment

conducted in the West and other East Asian countries, which we contrast with the literature on

market transition and gender-based employment inequalities in China. We then describe our

data and methods. Finally, we present an analysis of gender-based gaps in employment, income,

and time use. We close with a discussion of the implications of findings for further research on

gender, work and family in reform-era China.

Gender and Employment

Comparative Perspectives

The conflict between family responsibility and work has been considered one of the

major causes of gender disparities in labor market outcomes in the US and many other

industrialized and developing countries. Research emphasizes that women’s household

responsibilities, particularly after marriage or childbirth, are often greater than men’s. For this

reason, wives and mothers face barriers to productivity in the workplace not experienced by

single women, married men, or fathers.



3

For example, studies in the US have found a persistent wage penalty for motherhood

(Waldfogel, 1997; Budig & England, 2001; Avellar & Smock, 2003; Lundberg & Rose, 2000;

Anderson, 2003). Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data on mothers aged 14-21 in

1979, Budig and England (2001) found a wage penalty of 7 percent for each child; the penalty

was larger for married women than for unmarried women. A cross-cohort comparison that also

used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data found that the penalty has not diminished over

time, even after controlling for human capital and other unobserved heterogeneity (Avellar &

Smock, 2003).

In identifying causes of this penalty, studies point to women’s career break after

childbirth, segregation into low-status jobs and part time jobs, shorter work hours, and,

importantly, disproportionate share of family responsibilities in the context of dual-earner

couples (Jacobs & Gornick, 2002; Jacobs, 1989, 2001; Arun, Arun, & Borooah, 2004; Reid,

2002; Cohen & Huffman, 2003). Noonan (2001) tests another explanation for the negative

relationship between housework and wages for women by focusing on the fact that, typically,

women and men perform different type of household chores. She found that only time spent on

“female” household chores had a negative effect on wages.

Research has highlighted similar barriers to female employment in European countries

(Sigle-Rushton & Waldfogel, 2004; Davies, Elias, & Pierre, 2003). Trappe and Rosenfeld

(2000) found that in former West Germany, being a parent had positive effects on men’s

earnings, but strong negative effects on women’s wages, whereas in the former East Germany,

some young women balanced family and employment by taking jobs below their qualifications,

and this reduced their earnings.

In East Asia, research outside of China has shown a rapid increase in women’s



participation in the labor market in recent years (Brinton, 2001). For example, in South Korea,

economic activity rates among 25-29 year-old women rose from 38 percent in 1980 to 58 percent

in 2000; in Japan, corresponding figures were 49 and 70 percent (Hannum & Fuller, 2004, Figure

1). Despite these increases, in some East Asian countries, specifically Japan and South Korea,

many women drop out of the labor force at marriage or childbirth, then re-enter in middle age.

In Taiwan, where work and day care arrangements are more flexible, the trend of women’s

participation across the life course is more like that in the West, where many remain in the labor

force after marriage and childbirth (Brinton, 2001).

In East Asian countries, the income of women lags behind that of men. In Taiwan,

estimates suggest that full-time employed women earn about 69.8 percent of men’s earnings,

while in South Korea, full-time women earn only about 54.6 percent of men’s earnings (Brinton,

2001, p. 16). The gender wage gap is particularly wide for older workers (Brinton, 2001; Yu,