Rural Wives

ACCORDING to recent statistics. 66.1 percent of the 72.22 million rural and township population who have "floated" to urban areas are male. That is to say, about 47.74 million rural male laborers have left their homes and fields to work in cities. Consequently, about 40 million married women have been left behind in the countryside to manage everything from household chores to agricultural production, This is a new phenomenon in the countryside that has resulted from China's reform and opening up to the outside world.     

Rural Women Climb Poverty

WITHIN the past 15 year economic development in China has experienced an unprecedented leap forward. However, much like the widely varied geography of China, great economic differences exist across this vast country. In 1984 the State Council designated 14 areas as poor areas in China. Most of these areas are distributed throughout th remote, western mountainous region, an in some densely populated communities of ethnic groups. A number of peasants in these areas still go without adequate food or clothing.     

Progress of Rural Family

3435Progress of Rural Family     

Temporary Rural Workers in Beijing

Many young farmers leave their native bomes and come to Beijing in search of a new life.     

National Honor For Rural Women

NEWLY literate women are taking the lead in eliminating rural poverty through literacy. Ten of the nation's best newly literate women were selected by'the All-China Women's Federation to attend a grand prize awards ceremony held in Beijing on September 7, 1996, just before the World Anti-illiteracy Day. The All-China Women's Federation has set a goal of wiping out illiteracy     

An Unfor gettable Rural Couple

Twenty-five years ago when I was 17, I went to the countryside and spent three years in a village called Rucun one thousand kilometers away from Beijing. During the three years, like an ordinary farmer, I went into the fields at sunrise and returned at sunset to obtain my rations from my own labor. I never expected the three-year experience would become an unforgettable memory in my life. I went to settle down in the     

Rural Women Participate in Agricultural Production

THE rural market economy is becoming feminized because many male laborers are transferring to nonagricultural work. Women are now making a show of their decisive force in utilizing agricultural resources. As a result, agriculture's sustainable development will more and more depend on women's qualifications, including how well they will manage agricultural resources and how well they will master science and technology. In fact, rural women don't yet have full economic independence. Although they have involved themselves in economic activities and have played a     

A Rural Woman Becomes an Entrepreneur

IN Kunshan City, adjacent to Shanghai, Wang Xiufang is almost a household name. She is the director of Kunshan General Leather Product and Down Clothing Factory in southern Jiangsu Province. This is a second state level enterprise.     

Rural Girls Seek Education in Beijing

SINCE the policy of reform and opening was implemented in China, the Chinese farmers who toiled in the fields for thousands of years have been awakened. They have surged into large and medium-sized towns and developed areas. Now they earn more money than ever and have a chance to see the world. Many of these people are women. A new trend is quietly emerging among young women from farming communities who have traveled to the     

Photographer Follows Progress of Rural Family

At the 1994 Spring Festival Party held by China Central Television, a press photographer and the four large photos he had on display became one of the highlights of the event. The photos were taken in 1950, 1963, 1979 and 1994, respectively of an ordinary rural family in Zhejiang Province. They were selected from nearly 1,000 photos taken by the photographer on more than 50 visits to this family. They trace the changes of an ordinary Chinese family and vividly illustrate the historical changes that have taken place in New China. The photographer was Xu Yonghui, a senior reporter with Zhejiang Daily. In this issue we feature a few of his photos and a report which testify to those changes.     

Enterprising Rural Woman Improves Life of Village

IN the countryside it is said if children are capable they must have a good mother. Dong Cuiyun is a shining example of this traditional belief. At 52, Dong, an ordinary rural woman, is neither tall nor especially slender, but her rosy cheeks and broad forehead speak of her energy and openness. Her husband died and left her with three children under 10 years old. But thanks to     

A Rural Woman Supports Five College Students

SEEING off her youngest daughter, Zhang Xiling, in her fifties and tired, leaned against a low, old and dilapidated house made of mud. The little hill village looked very quiet at dusk; the hilly road in the evening glow zigzaged further away. This common rural woman stared at the hilly road where she watched her dreams go as all her children went away one by one. In 1978, Nie Wenhai, her oldest son, was admitted to Harbin Col-     

Chinese Rural Women's Decision-Making Status in Family

THE decision-making status of rural women in families is an important aspect which reflects the degree of their participation in development. Implementation of the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women represent over the past 10 years has witnessed the gradual maturation of the production-related contract responsibility system in Chinese rural areas. Family functions have been further strengthened in both productive and social development in basic units such as production, consumption and trade. The period has been an important time for the rapid development of Chinese township     

Rural Women Get Help from Women Students

SINCE more and more rural women have become involved in commercial production, they have become more and more eager to learn about scientific technology. The Women's Federation of Beijing had long been looking for a direct and effective way to help them. Luo Xiaolu, vicedirector of the Federation, found in her investigation of the present conditions of intellectual women in Beijing that women students were also eager to get in touch with society. Then she had an idea that women students in universities and colleges should go to the countryside. Thus, an activity developed called "women college students and rural women, hand in hand."     

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: A Policy Solution to Rural Poverty in India?

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was developed by the Indian government to reduce rural poverty through 100 days of guaranteed employment per year. Using focus group methods, we explore whether this scheme has provided rights' based social protection through guaranteed employment for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. We found that the experiences of participating in MGNREGA varied depending on how MGNREGA wages compared to market wages in the region, as well as local implementation of the program. Although MGNREGA offered some basic employment for marginalized groups, it did not provide substantial help to the most vulnerable. However, there was some evidence of small but significant shifts in labour relations. Higher wages, more opportunities for work, better implementation and a greater recognition of the caregiving responsibilities of women will be required for this policy to fully meet its goals.     

Rural Women Fight for Their Right to Land

TONG Sufang never expected that she would lose her land ongetting married.Tong,27,was married in 1992 to a man inanother village.The couple moved to the city to find jobs,leavingtheir land to their parents.Earlier this year,when the village whereTong lived before her marriage distributed another round ofcontracted land,Tong was not listed as a candidate for a share ofthe village soil.The reason:Tong is married and does not live inthe village any more,although she has never moved hermembership to her husband’s village and is still legally a memberof the village of her childhood. The same thing happened to Hou Cunli,who moved to her     

What Motivates Gifts? Intra-Family Transfers in Rural Malawi

This paper uses Family Transfers Project data collected in rural Malawi during 1999 to ascertain the motivation for gift-giving using discriminating hypotheses. The study models monetary and monetized gifts sent and received between the survey respondents and their parents, their children, and their siblings as a function of sender and receiver characteristics. Individual analyses are compared with household level models to reveal that both individual and household characteristics can matter in different cases. OLS, Probit and Tobit models are compared to conclude that, as with other similar studies, a wide range of motivations exist including altruism, (co-)insurance, and an inheritance motive. Motivations differ slightly depending upon the relationship between the sender and receiver, however, no single motive can be attributed to any given relationship.     

Differential Recovery Migration across the Rural–Urban Gradient: Minimal and Short-Term Population Gains for Rural Disaster-Affected Gulf Coast Counties

Places affected or threatened by extreme environmental disturbances confront a number of significant issues, including whether their populations will stay the same or change through migration. Research on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shows some displaced residents returned to their disaster-affected communities once the built environment was restored, new migrants settled in affected places as part of the rebuilding effort, and the regional migration system grew more urbanized and spatially concentrated during post-disaster years. Research also shows that not all disaster-affected places recovered their populations. Our study examines whether differential recovery is systematically patterned along the rural–urban gradient. Using U.S. Census Bureau estimates and IRS county-to-county migration data, we investigate whether the 2005 hurricane season differentially exacerbated or altered previous migration trends across a rural–urban gradient that incorporates proximity to metropolitan areas and disaster-related housing loss. We find a rural–urban differential in Gulf Coast recovery migration: The disaster boosted migration among non-metropolitan counties, yet these increases were smaller and short-lived compared to the patterns found for metropolitan counties, most especially high loss metropolitan counties. Our findings encourage theories of environmental migration to incorporate spatial differentiation and scenarios of environmental changes to account for differential impacts on settlement patterns across the rural–urban continuum.     

Action for Eliminating Poverty——News From Rural Shanxi

Farmers living in the lüliang Mountains in remote and dry(?)tern Shanxi Province are eager to impro(?) their living standards.