Entanglement of modernity, ethnicity, and contested empowerment: Gendered paradoxes in a Miao Village Development in China

IF 1.9 3区社会学 Q2 WOMENS STUDIES

Womens Studies International Forum Pub Date : 2025-09-08 DOI:10.1016/j.wsif.2025.103200

Chuanhong Zhang, Heshui Huang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

China's rural revitalization strategy drives transformative interventions in remote ethnic communities, yet its gendered consequences remain critically under-examined. Through longitudinal participatory observation and open-structured interviews (2021–2024) in a Miao village in Southwest China, this study interrogates how development reconfigures household and community gender dynamics. The intersecting forces of ethnicity, patrilineal norms, and modernity co-produce an empowerment paradox: while development projects provide economic resources, women's transformative agency remains unrealized due to systemic entrenchment of patriarchal structures, manifested in the intensification of reproductive labor, dilution of women's economic gains and other cultural-institutional backlashes. Development impacts diverge critically between dual-participant and female-only participant households. These results demonstrate that patriarchal backlash disrupts resource-to-agency conversion, showing that economic interventions alone are insufficient to dismantle structural inequities. Policy imperatives include redistributive care services, interventions through women's cooperatives, and digital asset governance. By centering ethnic minority women's experiences, this research advances an intersectional framework for feminist development praxis, revealing how modernity's promises are mediated by enduring hierarchies of gender and ethnicity.

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现代性、族群性与争议性赋权的纠缠：中国苗族村落发展中的性别悖论

中国的乡村振兴战略推动了对偏远民族社区的变革性干预，但其性别后果仍未得到充分研究。通过纵向参与式观察和开放式结构访谈（2021-2024），本研究探讨了发展如何重新配置家庭和社区性别动态。种族、父系规范和现代性的相互交织的力量共同产生了一种赋权悖论：虽然发展项目提供了经济资源，但由于父系结构的系统性巩固，妇女的变革主体仍然没有实现，这表现在生殖劳动的加剧、妇女经济收益的稀释和其他文化制度的反弹。双重参与人家庭和纯女性参与人家庭对发展的影响大相径庭。这些结果表明，父权制的反弹破坏了资源到代理的转换，表明仅靠经济干预不足以消除结构性不平等。政策要求包括再分配护理服务、通过妇女合作社进行干预和数字资产治理。本研究以少数民族妇女的经验为中心，提出了一个女权主义发展实践的交叉框架，揭示了现代性的承诺是如何被持久的性别和种族等级所中介的。

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来源期刊

Womens Studies International Forum WOMENS STUDIES-

CiteScore

2.50

自引率

7.10%

发文量

审稿时长

79 days

期刊介绍： Women"s Studies International Forum (formerly Women"s Studies International Quarterly, established in 1978) is a bimonthly journal to aid the distribution and exchange of feminist research in the multidisciplinary, international area of women"s studies and in feminist research in other disciplines. The policy of the journal is to establish a feminist forum for discussion and debate. The journal seeks to critique and reconceptualize existing knowledge, to examine and re-evaluate the manner in which knowledge is produced and distributed, and to assess the implications this has for women"s lives.