The Making of Modern Female Workers in Reemployment Programs in Post-Socialist China

Abstract

Using the case of the Good-Heart Elder Home in Hangzhou, this study investigates the cultural meaning of reemployment programs for middle-aged, low-skilled women in contemporary China. The official discourse of the reemployment programs encourages disciplined and competitive workers and requires the women to abandon their habitus as familial home caregivers and formerly uncompetitive laborers under state socialism. The workers, however, embrace their role as skillful home caregivers to defend their autonomy and social values. This conflict is partially reconciled through informal relationships between the manager and the workers even though personal ties in the workplace are a feature of the socialist habitus that both the management and the workers regard as undesirable. Consideration of the mechanisms of habitus change and the ways in which female employees at the elder home resisted them raises questions about how well these reemployment programs fulfill their stated goals.