‘You are not Young Anymore!’: Gender, Age and the Politics of Reproduction in Post-reform China

Abstract

Based on in-depth interview data and popular culture texts, the current study has explored the politics of reproduction revolving around women's age in contemporary China. Conceptualizing reproduction as a site of contestation and politics between different, and often contradictory, sets of discourses and power structures, I pursue a feminist and social constructivist analysis of the politics of reproduction in the lives of a group of urban professional women who are yet to enter motherhood at their late 20s and 30s. I engage with Inhorn's (2009) concept of 'disrupted reproduction' to highlight the politically, morally and emotionally charged contestations in the 'problematized' reproductive lives of these women. I unveil how Chinese professional women beyond their 'reproductive prime' are discursively constructed as 'disrupters', who fail their femininity test tied to a motherhood identity within the family context, challenge the 'natural' biological law regulating their reproductive bodies, and face a doomed reproductive future fraught with medical, physical and emotional traumas which ART cannot alleviate. Such a discourse renders invisible the structural causes of problems and challenges professional women face in negotiating parenthood, social norms and selfhood, which systematically put them under pervasive social surveillance and discipline.

Traditional gender roles and patriarchal values: Critical personal narratives of a woman from the Chaoshan region in China

“…Moreover, the Chaoshan region stands out for its rich cultural heritage, distinctive dialect, culinary excellence, historical significance, and vibrant social customs. The Chaoshan region is a traditional region deeply influenced by the broader Chinese cultural background; as Gu (2021) highlighted, rural Chaoshan is “an area in Guangdong allegedly very ‘traditional’ in maintaining the men‐outside‐women‐inside family model” (p. 67).…”

Social Sciences, Bioethics, and the Question of Population

“…The inability to marry becomes a trope of the ways in which certain populations become liabilities for those nation states and communities that are actively involved in 'designing' desired families, and by extension, populations. Similarly, Gu (2021) shows how unmarried women become part of a population marked by the imaginings around pronatalism and the biological clock. Gender is a very important marker of bioethics here, both in how it is manufactured socially and marked physiologically through pronatalist conversations around suitable progeny.…”