Beyond Empowerment: Improving Rural Migrant Women Factory Workers' Lives in China

Neoliberalism, or the resurgence of laissez-faire economics that emphasizes the rights of individuals over collective well-being, is both condemned and reluctantly applauded by women’s rights advocates. Some stress that neoliberalism increases women’s burdens, exploitation and poverty. Yet others point out that women can gain new experiences, freedoms and power through participation in the globalized economy. I argue for moving beyond discussions of neoliberalism as either “bad” or “good” for women’s empowerment to instead ask, what can be done to make women’s lives better? In this case study, I examine Chinese working women who migrate from the countryside to cities to work in factories in order to ask how best to improve Chinese female factory workers’ lives. China’s government, heavily dependent upon export-led economic growth, controls labor unions and what few labor laws exist in China are not adequately enforced. Labor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are one way to address workers’ rights but recent crackdowns on civil society show the difficulties with this approach. I examine two groups, the Sunflower Women’s Worker Center and the Chinese Working Women’s Network to explore how effective labor NGOs can be in the effort for workers’ rights in China. My data derives from ethnographies, newspapers and labor solidarity organizations such as Labor Notes and China Labor Watch. This study contributes to feminist labor scholarship and is meant to bridge theory and practice. Initial findings suggest that while Chinese civil society is hampered, women’s rights labor NGOs are making progress.