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Are Women Taking over the Farm in China?

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Abstract

Development practitioners in the West have proclaimed that a "feminization of agriculture" is occurring in the developing world. In this paper, I use household survey data collected in rural China to empirically test whether or not women have been doing an increasing amount of farmwork. I find exactly the opposite-- if anything, the proportion of farmwork being done by women is declining over the late 1990s. Furthermore, I analyze the demographic composition of the farm labor force and find that the future feminization of agriculture is unlikely.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan de Brauw, 2003. "Are Women Taking over the Farm in China?," Department of Economics Working Papers 2003-02, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2003-02
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    File URL: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/debrauw_fem.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Glauben, Thomas & Herzfeld, Thomas & Wang, Xiaobing, 2008. "Labor market participation of Chinese agricultural households: Empirical evidence from Zhejiang province," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 329-340, August.
    2. Yuqin Huang, 2012. "From the ‘feminization of agriculture’ to the ‘ageing of farming populations’: Demographic transition and farming in a central Chinese village," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 27(1), pages 19-32, February.
    3. Zhang, Linxiu & de Brauw, Alan & Rozelle, Scott, 2004. "China's rural labor market development and its gender implications," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 230-247.
    4. Hien, Nguyen Thi Thu, 2019. "Consequences of urban migration of adult children for the elderly left-behind in rural Vietnam," OSF Preprints zxyf8, Center for Open Science.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Women; agriculture; China; farm labor;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J43 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Agricultural Labor Markets

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