Principal speaker
Associate Professor Jane Golley, Economist and Director, Australian Centre on China in the World, The Australian National University.
This seminar will present a pessimistic picture of gender inequities in China today, reflected in rampant levels of discrimination against women in the labour force, the Chinese government's tightening censorship of feminist ideas and activism, Xi Jinping's campaign to "reinforce traditional family values', declining participation of women in politics, and China's deteriorating position in global rankings of gender equality. I will then focus on my empirical research (presented for a non-economics audience) on gender inequality in China's labour earnings, in the broader context of "inequality in opportunity' - defined as the component of inequality determined by personal "circumstances' that lie beyond the control of each individual, as opposed to "efforts' that individuals can exert to improve their earning capacity. This analysis reveals that gender is the single most important circumstance determining earnings inequality in China, with one's birth region, father's occupation, father's education, and hukou status also playing significant roles. These uncomfortable results resonate with the broader pessimistic picture, and highlight the urgent need for a widespread feminist awakening across China - alongside some radically different gender policies to the ones currently in place.
Associate Professor Jane Golley is an economist and Director of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at The Australian National University (ANU). Jane is an ANU graduate (BEc, Hons, 1993) and worked in the Asia Section of the Australian Commonwealth Treasury before undertaking her Mphil and Dphil in Economics at the University of Oxford. After eight years studying and teaching economics in Oxford, she returned to the ANU's School of Economics in 2003, moving to the Crawford School of Public Policy in 2009, and to CIW in 2011.
Her research over several decades has covered a wide range of Chinese transition and development issues, including industrial agglomeration and regional policy; demographic change and economic growth; rural-urban and gender inequalities in education and income; Socialism with Chinese characteristics and the Belt and Road Initiative. Jane is actively engaged in public policy and media debate regarding the Australia-China relationship. She is a co-editor of the China Story Yearbook series, including Power, published in 2019.
Room change: N54_2.06.
Event categories
RSVP
RSVP on or before Monday 13 May 2019 , by email events-gai@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 07 3735 4705
Event contact details
- Kahlia Bartley
- events-gai@griffith.edu.au
- 07 3735 4705