The Incompatibility of Rights: Gender Essentialism, Market Primacy, and Women's Work-Family Struggles in an Autocracy

Author:   Yun Zhou (University of Michigan)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781009658119


Pages:   75
Publication Date:   02 July 2026
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD   Availability explained
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The Incompatibility of Rights: Gender Essentialism, Market Primacy, and Women's Work-Family Struggles in an Autocracy


Overview

Why do self-described gender egalitarians support the state's draconian birth restriction? Following China's universal relaxation of its one-child policy in 2016, this Element excavates an under-theorized and distinctly political dimension of the gendered work-family conflict: the incompatibility of rights. I demonstrate that young urban Chinese women have experienced the expansion of their civil right to mother-through birth quota relaxation-as intensifying labor market gender discriminations and undermining their civil right to equal employment. To cope, these women turned to various individualistic strategies of rights-trading, such as promising to limit childbearing when seeking to secure employment. In this process, young Chinese women have further come to perceive employment and motherhood as two incompatible moral claims of entitlement. This Element highlights how women's quotidian work-family encounters present a fruitful yet underexplored site for understanding their political ideations and citizenship struggles. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Full Product Details

Author:   Yun Zhou (University of Michigan)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781009658119


ISBN 10:   1009658115
Pages:   75
Publication Date:   02 July 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Theorizing the gendered incompatibility of rights; 3. Studying employment and motherhood in authoritarian China; 4. Between Scylla and Charybdis; 5. Making rights incompatible; 6. The political implications of navigating rights at odds; 7. Bringing the state back in; Bringing work-family back in; 8. Epilogue.

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