From State Dominance to Market Orientation: The Composition and Evolution of Gender Discourse

State, market and traditional culture are the three fundamental elements constructing gender discourse. The three decades before the initiation of reform and opening up in 1978 and the three after have witnessed a clear transition in gender discourse in Chinese society, from state-dominated pan-politicization to a pan-marketization orientation. Marketization has changed the content and form of state discourse and led to an alliance of market discourse with traditional discourse. The changed gender discourse is essentially a discourse of quality, one that is no longer presented as an ideological myth of equality constructed by the state and discounted in practice but as a set of deliberate response strategies which are adopted to make independent choices balancing the three forces of the state, the market and traditional culture in the midst of appeals for modernity and individual freedom.