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Sex Ratio Imbalances and China's Care for Girls Programme: A Case Study of a Social Problem*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Rachel Murphy
Rachel Murphy*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford. Email: rachel.murphy@sant.ox.ac.uk.
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Abstract

In China, owing to many parents' preference for sons, the sex ratio at birth (SRB) is imbalanced. During the 2000s, SRB fluctuated at around 120 boys to 100 girls. In the early 2000s, to tackle the SRB imbalance, the Chinese government launched a series of policy measures under the banner of “care for girls.” This article presents a case study of the Care for Girls programme in order to explore how the construction of SRB as a social problem has led to the formulation and adoption of one set of policy responses to the exclusion of others. The analysis shows that the imbalanced SRB has been attributed to rural peoples' cultural and economic deficiencies rather than cast in terms of a need to recognize the inherent worth of girls or a need to ensure that all rural families have entitlements to basic social welfare. This construction of SRB has enabled the Party-state to advance a “care as control” policy response which comprises ideological education, conditional material benefits and sanctions, and which sidesteps the institutional underpinnings of the problem.

摘要

由于许多父母重男轻女, 中国的出生性别比失衡。在本世纪第一个十年里, 出生性别比徘徊在 120 个男孩比 100 个女孩左右。作为对策, 本世纪初, 中国政府起动了一系列‘关爱女孩’的政策措施。此文用一个案例, 探讨出生性别比失衡这个社会问题如何导致某一类政策的形成和采用而排除其它的政策回应。分析表明, 出生性别比失衡被归因于农村人民在文化和经济方面的欠缺, 而没有表述为需要确认女孩的内在价值, 或需要承认所有农村家庭基本的社会福利权益。如此构建的出生性别比失衡, 使国家得以推行 ‘用关心来控制’ 的对应政策, 其中包括思想教育和有条件的物质利益或制裁, 同时回避了体制基础的问题。

Keywords

sex ratiossocial problemspopulation policyCare for Girls programmeideological educationwelfarerural China性別比例社会问题人口政策关爱女孩行动思想教育社会福利中国农村
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 219 , September 2014 , pp. 781 - 807
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2014 

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Footnotes

*

The fieldwork for this research was funded by small grants from the Nuffield Foundation, the British Inter-University China Centre (BICC) and the Oxford Contemporary Chinese Studies Programme. The fieldwork was made possible with the help of the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences, especially Mr Jianping Song and Ms Xiaoqian Kuang, and Professor Ran Tao of Renmin University, although it must be noted that these institutions and individuals have had no influence on any aspect of the analysis and the arguments. I am also very grateful to the individuals who granted interviews. These people were thoroughly dedicated to the cause of trying to rebalance SRB. The analysis in this article does not reflect on their commitment but on the wider ideological and institutional parameters within which they carried out their work. I am grateful to participants in the sociology departmental seminar series, University of Cambridge, where an earlier version of this paper was presented in March 2012. Additionally, I wish to thank John Harris, Anna Lora-Wainwright, Rana Mitter and two anonymous reviewers at The China Quarterly for helpful comments.

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