This paper examines gender inequality in the context of structural transformation and rebalancing in China. We document declining women's relative wages and labor force participation in China during the last two decades, despite rapid growth and expansion of the service sector. Using household data, we provide evidence consistent with a U-shaped relationship between economic development and women's labor market outcomes. Using a model of structural transformation, we show that labor market barriers for women have increased over time. Model counterfactuals suggest that removing these barriers and increasing service sector productivity can boost both gender equality and economic growth in China.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has made advances in narrowing gender gaps in its labor market. It has one of the highest female labor force participation rates in Asia and the Pacific at around 64% in 2013, and one of the narrowest earnings gender gaps. This study investigates how women are faring in the transition to the PRC's new growth model, and what can be done to promote women's participation. It shows how the PRC is undergoing multiple transitions that have implications for gender equality and work. For example, during the market transition, gender wage gaps and gender wage discrimination increased, reaching 33% in urban areas and 44% in rural areas. Find out how evidenced-based gender analysis can foster gender responsive policy approaches to promote women's equality in the labor market.

One of the widely acknowledged consequences of the economic reforms in China over the past four decades has been widened social-gender gap and hence increased gender inequalities. In recent years, there is a rising concern of inequality in China and a mounting intellectual reflection and critique of the growth-focused development path China has followed so far. This collection can be seen as a part of this critique, but the focus is on gender and various forms of inequality pertaining to gender and gender relations. The book shows how various gender inequality issues are approached and analysed in the location of China by Chinese gender/social science scholars and how studies of gender inequality constitutes an astute critique of the neo-liberal capitalist development in China. The book brings forth a distinctive gender perspective to the Chinese intellectual and political analysis of social inequality and a Chinese perspective to the bulks of international scholarship on gender inequality in China.

How trade imbalances spurred on the global financial crisis and why we aren't out of trouble yet China's economic growth is sputtering, the Euro is under threat, and the United States is combating serious trade disadvantages. Another Great Depression? Not quite. Noted economist and China expert Michael Pettis argues instead that we are undergoing a critical rebalancing of the world economies. Debunking popular misconceptions, Pettis shows that severe trade imbalances spurred on the recent financial crisis and were the result of unfortunate policies that distorted the savings and consumption patterns of certain nations. Pettis examines the reasons behind these destabilizing policies, and he predicts severe economic dislocations that will have long-lasting effects. Demonstrating how economic policies can carry negative repercussions the world over, The Great Rebalancing sheds urgent light on our globally linked economic future.

This book employs epistemological, methodological and discursive approaches to explore the practices of tourism stakeholders in Covid-19 affected destinations and to understand and explain their everyday real-time doings and sayings. It discusses the changing practices of tourists and stakeholders at both micro and meso levels and provides a range of contexts and destination case studies offering insights into supply and demand. The issues examined in the volume will have continued implications for further study of the relationships between tourism, crises, pandemics and global travel. It will be a useful resource for researchers and students in tourism studies, geography, politics and policy, as well as sociology, history, crisis management and development studies.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and COVID-19 is the first comprehensive research guide for researchers and students who seek to study and evaluate the complex relationship between gender and COVID-19. This interdisciplinary collection touches on two major themes: first, how gender played a central role in shaping access to testing, treatment, and vaccines. Second, how the pandemic not only deepened existing gender inequalities, but also those along the lines of race, class, sexuality, disability, and immigration status. Bringing together a diverse range of international scholars across a number of disciplinary perspectives, this intersectional and comparative focus on COVID explores topics including the pandemic’s impact on families, employment, childcare and elder care, human rights, as well as gender and political economy and leadership, public health law, disability rights, and abortion access. The Routledge Companion to Gender and COVID-19 is an essential volume for scholars and students of Law, Gender Studies, Sociology, Health, Economics, and Politics.

The “happiness agenda” is a worldwide movement that claims that happiness is the highest good, happiness can be measured, and public policy should promote happiness. Against Happiness is a thorough and powerful critique of this program, revealing the flaws of its concept of happiness and advocating a renewed focus on equality and justice. Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, this book provides both theoretical and empirical analysis of the limitations of the happiness agenda. The authors emphasize that this movement draws on a parochial, Western-centric philosophical basis and demographic sample. They show that happiness defined as subjective satisfaction or a surplus of positive emotions bears little resemblance to the richer and more nuanced concepts of the good life found in many world traditions. Cross-cultural philosophy, comparative theology, and social and cultural psychology all teach that cultures and subcultures vary in how much value they place on life satisfaction or feeling happy. Furthermore, the ideas promoted by the happiness agenda can compete with rights, justice, sustainability, and equality—and even conceal racial and gender injustice. Against Happiness argues that a better way forward requires integration of cross-cultural philosophical, ethical, and political thought with critical social science. Ultimately, the authors contend, happiness should be a secondary goal—worth pursuing only if it is contingent on the demands of justice.