Abstract
Rural–urban migration has profoundly changed the traditional social structure and family relationships in China over the past 40 years. The goal of this study is to investigate the gender relationships between left-behind wives and migrant husbands in the context of Chinese rural–urban migration. Former studies have emphasized the importance of gender stratification in migration, demonstrating that the experiences of migrant women differ from those of migrant men. This study, however, shifts the focus onto left-behind wives, a vulnerable group in the countryside, whose husbands have migrated to a city. It examines the outcomes of Chinese rural–urban migration with regard to gender in a small Chinese village, which has been termed as the “patriarchal trap.” It finds that the disadvantaged position of wives left behind in rural migrant families is reflected in the following aspects. Firstly, the decision-making progress concerning migration and the discussions between rural wives and migrant husbands prior to undertaking migration reveals the dominant role played by rural men in taking such decisions with wives as passive participants. Secondly, despite the increase in responsibility, left-behind wives are still economically and psychologically dependent on their migrant husbands. Their wish to stay with their husbands often strengthens the gender stratification of their experiences. Thirdly, the gender difference between rural wives and migrant husbands is manifested in their differing attitudes toward and conceptualization of extramarital relationships, which reveals the privilege of migrant husbands and the vulnerability of their rural wives. The findings call for Chinese society to devote more attention to the issue of left-behind wives and provide more care to this vulnerable group in rural China.
Introduction
The scale of Chinese rural–urban migration has been a particularly eye-catching phenomenon over the past 40 years. This progress has broken previous barriers to rural–urban mobility and has thus had a large impact on processes of modernization and urbanization in post-socialist China (Q. Li, 2012). Meanwhile, it has reshaped rural society and altered the traditional population structure in rural societies (Ye, 2011; Ye et al., 2016; Ye et al., 2017). Various terms have been coined by government reports and academic articles as a result, such as nongmingong (the peasant workforce), “left-behind children,” “left-behind elders,” and the focus of this study: “left behind women.” The latter three groups have come to be recognized as vulnerable groups in today’s rural China. Among them, the left-behind women stand out, since it falls upon them to fulfil their family duties and play the traditional role of females (or wives), that is, undertaking the care for the other two left-behind groups in rural villages, “dancing solo,” as Ye and Wu (2008) put it, with their migrant husbands away in the cities. In China, there is an even greater number of rural left-behind wives. The figure is estimated at around 47 million, a huge number which has drawn much attention from society (Ye, 2019).
Although rural left-behind wives may share some characteristics in terms of care provision with full-time housewives in urban areas, there are also key differences. Full-time urban housewives, for example, usually live with their husbands and the family tends to be better-off. The choice to stay at home is usually voluntary. However, rural wives could be considered as a vulnerable group which finds itself excluded from the process of rural–urban migration. The husbands’ work commitments in urban areas afford them few visits back home. Thus, the rural wives being left behind has generally resulted in issues of gender exclusion and gender inequality in rural families (Ye et al., 2016).
This study has examined how Chinese rural left-behind wives are excluded by the progress of migration as opposed to being granted further autonomy through the authority of migrant husbands(Liu, 2018). It asks what happens to the social status and autonomy of women without the means to travel to meet spouses. The following will examine gender relations between left behind wives and their migrant husbands as a way to better understand how they are influenced by migration. Does rural–urban migration herald the liberation of left-behind women, or does it push them further into the trap of the patriarchy? In discussing the gender relationship, the narratives both of left-behind wives and migrant husbands will be addressed, to understand how rural–urban migration reshapes or reconstructs traditional gender relationships within these physically separated families.
Literature Review on Gender and Migration
The Traditional Patriarchy and Gender Inequality
In traditional China, the patriarchy has a long history and a profound influence. According to traditional ideas, women are expected to undertake child-rearing and childcare, and this gendered division of labor is still entrenched in rural China. This is illustrated by an old saying, “men control the outside and women control the inside [of the home],” that is, the masculine role is that of the breadwinner while the feminine role is to take care of the household labor and child-rearing (Brownell & Wasserstrom, 2002). First and foremost, there is a long-standing feudal family ideology which emphasizes male dominance or female subordination. The husband, as the leader of household, allows his wife to control domestic sphere activities such as daily household tasks and child-rearing/childcare while he acts as the primary provider of the family income. For example, in Jiaxun, “Household Regulations” in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), contends that the test for the capability of a man as a leader is whether he can control his wife who was regarded as an outsider of a secondary status at home. The terms tianzhi and benfen, which refer to one’s natural duties and responsibilities, were used to distinguish the gender roles of wife and husband in the family. It was considered the tianzhi of a husband to be the home owner and the benfen of a wife to mother and nurture at home. Chow and Berheide (1994, p. 175) summarize as follows:
In traditional China, family relationship as a prototype of other major social relationships were deeply rooted in the ethnic principle of filial piety, in which paternal authority reigned over children and women, demanding their obedience. Maintenance of patrilineage instilled a feudal ideology that valued fertility, favored sons to carry on the family name, and emphasized primogeniture (the inheritance right of the eldest son), thus devaluing the worth of women.
In other words, the traditional Chinese family has been basically patriarchal in nature and has perpetuated male privilege, gender inequality and the exploitation of women. Women are seen as subordinate and have been assigned the primary duty of childrearing and childcare. Based on this gender biased ideology, migrant mothers risk facing criticism as “bad mothers” for absconding from their family duties.
Gender inequality continues to prevail in rural families against the backdrop of large scale of rural–urban migration. In traditional rural families, the labor is typically divided as follows: “men plough in the fields, women weave in the house” a set-up which persisted for thousands of years in traditional Chinese society. This traditional labor division has undergone changes in the wake of millions of migrant workers, mostly males and unmarried females, leaving to take up job opportunities in urban areas. A new kind of labor division has sprung up, with men migrating out to work in cities and women left behind take over farming in the countryside. Scholars have pointed to three main factors with regard to the phenomenon of the left-behind rural married women, which are the disadvantaged position of women migrants in urban labor market, the household registration system (hukou), and traditional gender norms that associate women with family responsibilities and motherly obligations (Kun & Chen, 2018).
The migration has tended to have a negative impact on the labor market participation of married women, especially those with dependent children who must shoulder the motherhood penalty (Correll et al., 2007). Similarly, other female migrant workers in China encounter further difficulties. If they become pregnant, they are usually kicked out of the urban labor market. This becomes a restrictive mechanism for child-bearing: the logistical implications of pregnancy in some instances persuade migrant women to postpone procreation (Chu, 2016; Liu, 2007). In recent years, Chinese scholars have noticed a gender disparity between female migrant workers, especially married women, in their urban labor market experiences (C. Wang & Ye, 2020). The current gender segregation in terms of permissible occupations means women have fewer opportunities in the labor market than men, regardless of location. Most rural migrant women take low-paid, gender-specific jobs, such as cleaning, or babysitting. The proportion of those who return to rural areas is much higher among married women than that of their male counterparts. It is also seen as a family livelihood strategy to let the women stay at home to deal with the family responsibilities because of the marginalized social status of migrant workers in urban China (Mu & Van de Walle, 2011; Ye & Wu, 2008).
Gender Relationship and Migration
There is debate over whether the out-migration of males has had the positive effect of empowerment or the negative effect of gender exclusion for the rural wives left behind (Biao, 2007; Hu, 2019; Q. Li & Ye, 2017; Meng & Ding, 2020; Wu & Rao, 2009; Ye et al., 2016; Ye & Wu, 2008). On one hand, the rise in female-headed rural households means the wives can benefit from remittances which gives them some level of autonomy at home while their migrant husbands are absent, although such remittances are not on the same scale as those which come from transnational migration. Scholars generally admit that monetary remittances sent by migrant husbands are beneficial for left-behind women in that they improve their living standards and broaden the involvement of women in the rural community (S. Wang & Luo, 2014; Ye, 2018).
On the other hand, it has maintained or even reenforced the subordinate position of women within the patriarchal system which underpins their dependence on their husbands (Jie & Liu, 2014; Li, 2008). Migration does not improve the social status of women or alter oppressive gender relationships. Rather, it leads to the dis-empowerment of women and reenforces their reliance on men both with regard to economic and emotional support, thus exposing them to new areas of vulnerability. For example, Ye and Wu (2008) use a metaphor of “san zuo dashan,” or “three mountainous burdens,” to describe the huge responsibilities shouldered by left-behind rural wives, that is, farming, elders, and children. Zhang (2013) argues that the return of married migrant women to rural villages to take over family responsibilities sustains the patriarchal power relations within rural households, despite the greater level of freedom they previously experienced through migration. The study by Zhang has examined patriarchal relationships through looking at the wider category of female returnees, not left-behind wives specifically, although most left-behind wives have previously been migrants. Ye et al. (2016) also clearly demonstrate the gender exclusion and gender inequality in the experiences of left-behind rural wives in the eyes of migrant husbands, rural community members, and local government officials. Thus, a variety of research perspectives have pointed to the subordinate position of left-behind rural wives.
However, the research in Ye et al. (2016) is only concerned with the gender inequality post-migration, and does not investigate the decision-making stage prior to migration. In fact, gender inequality also impacts on who migrates and who is left behind. Hence, the process of making the decision to migrate offers another prism through which to examine the gender relationships within migrant families. This study has therefore opted for a combined focus on the decision-making process pre-migration as well as the post-migration outcomes and experiences to supply a dynamic overview of the gendered relationship between rural wives and migrant husbands.
The Impacts of Migration on Left-Behind Wives
The current body of literature outlines the impact of the husbands’ migration mostly with regard to the well-being of left-behind rural wives, covering such topics as physical and mental health, the feminization of agriculture, and the quality of marital life (L. Li et al., 2018; C. Wang & Wu, 2020; C. Xu, 2010; Ye & Wu, 2010). While there is a large corpus of sociological studies on the above issues, as yet there have only been a few studies in the medical field which have looked at the negative impact of spousal separation on the physical health of married individuals (Li, 2008).
With regard to marital life, existing literature has unsurprisingly shown that marital satisfaction among left-behind rural wives is low (C. Xu, 2010; Wu, 2009). C. Xu (2010) has described their situation as “walking the edge of the marriage” which is illustrative of these women’s dissatisfaction with their marriage as a result of long-term separation. The out-migration of husbands has increased the risk of extramarital affairs and even divorce, which negatively affects marital stability. Despite this, few studies have examined the effects of rural–urban migration on their marital life from the perspective of gender inequality. The negative outcomes are pointed out in the literature, but without taking into account gender differences through a sole focus on the voices of left-behind rural wives (Huang, 2018; Luo, 2017; Sun & Zhang, 2021). For instance, Sun and Zhang’s (2021) investigation only interviews 100 left-behind wives in four rural villages to reach this conclusion. Although male out-migration has increased the possibility of infidelity for both men and women, it might increase the woman’s vulnerability to potential abandonment and jeopardizes the woman’s subordinate, “replaceable” position. Thus, this study hopes to provide a lens to look at the different attitudes shown by migrant husbands and left-behind wives toward marital life, especially those that concern extramarital affairs after rural–urban migration.
Masculine Compromises and Patriarchal Bargains
The impact of migration on rural households can be observed not only from the perspective of migrant males, but also from the perspective of migrant females. The first perspective has been termed “masculine compromises” (Choi & Peng, 2016) and the second “patriarchal bargains” (Kandiyoti, 1988). However, little research has explored the gender relationship within a migrant family from the views of left-behind rural wives.
Choi and Peng (2016) have summarized the changes to the lives of male migrant workers and their new roles as husbands, fathers, and sons through the idea of masculine compromises. It depicts that, with regard to gender priority, migrant men are forced to make compromises conceding certain aspects of male dominance within their families and find ways to symbolically maintain superiority within the shifting patriarchy. The concept of patriarchal bargains, proposed by Kandiyoti (1988), refers to how migrant women have come to challenge traditional gender roles without breaching the patriarchal structures to gain certain benefits. The relationships in migrant families in urban areas offer migrant women new chances to redefine the conventional gender roles and norms and question the man’s priority and superiority within the patriarchal system (Kandiyoti, 1988).
There have been a few studies on the patriarchal bargains made by Chinese rural migrant women (Jacka, 2012; Jacka et al., 2013; Jacka & Sargeson, 2011). For example, Jacka and Sargeson (2011) point to gender inequality in the distribution of leisure resources (time and money) between husbands and wives in rural families. The finding reveals that the involvement of rural women in paid work has the potential to challenge previous justifications for their husband’s privilege in leisure distribution. Nevertheless, only a handful of studies have focused on how Chinese rural–urban migration has changed the lives and gender relationships of rural left-behind wives (Duan, 2010).
Research Method
This study aims to build a picture of the family life of left-behind wives and their migrant husbands which brings the salient gender differences within the migrant family into relief. Based on qualitative data from the left-behind wives in Fuli Village, Anhui Province, and their migrant husbands scattered around Chinese cities, this study aims to supply an empirical examination of the extent to which the migration of husbands has influenced the Chinese rural family and the gender relationships concerned by combining the narratives both of migrant husbands and left-behind wives.
Through a small sample and qualitative methods, it sheds light on issues of intimacy and gender relationships, as well revealing the unequal status between male migrant workers and their left-behind wives. Between July 2015 and May 2016, the author(s) conducted fieldwork in Fuli Village (with the wives) and across several Chinese cities (with the migrant husbands) through in-depth interviews and participant observation.
First, the author(s) interviewed the Director of Women’s Committee (funü wei) and the formal or informal local organizers, who gave me an overview of the general situation of the left-behind wives of Fuli village. Following the interview, the Director of Women’s Committee permitted me to accompany her on her family visits and interview the left-behind wives in their houses or gardens. Over the following days, the author(s) conducted more interviews with left-behind wives through the snowball sampling method. Following the interviews, the author(s) also joined in with the local activities popular among rural females, such as public square dancing (guangchang wu), village fairs, playing mahjong, and kindergarten school-runs. As more and more villagers got involved, the author(s) invited more wives to answer my open-ended questions of how they feel about their left-behind rural lives, and gradually dug deeper into more private issues such as family finances, extramarital affairs, and divorce.
In the end, 10 women residents in Fuli Village (see Table 1) were selected for this case study for the following reasons. Firstly, these 10 cases expressed a more open attitude to the author(s)’ role as a researcher and were friendly about showing their opinions. Secondly, in these cases the author(s) was able to obtain the consent of their migrant husbands to interview them in the city, thereby enabling the author(s) to access both sides of the story. Thirdly, they presented the author(s) with more information on their marital satisfaction, migrant experiences (both before and after marriage), family status, and so on.To protect the privacy of interviewees, all names in this paper are pseudonyms.
To take a deeper look at the effects of migration on gender relationships in these families, the author(s) also visited to the locations of the migrant husbands (e.g., Fuzhou, Ningbo, Beijing, Wuxi) of the aforementioned 10 women and conducted interviews with them. The husbands had all been working in the city for a minimum of 1 year. Age-wise, the 10 couples discussed in this study ranged from young to middle-aged. The wives were aged between 24 and 42, and husbands were aged between 27 and 46. Except for one couple, all were parents, and only one was already a grandmother, caring for her left-behind grandchildren.
The educational level of the left-behind wives ranged from illiteracy to junior high school graduation. Prior to currently living in the village, 8 of the 10 wives had previously been migrants. Four of them had divorced with their migrant ex-husbands. Of those, one wife was in her 20s and the other three were in their 30s during the migration of their husbands. The migrant husbands had been away from the village for periods ranging from 1 to 15 years.
Information on the 10 Couples.
To protect the privacy of interviewees, all names in this paper are pseudonyms.
Migration and Family Division of Labor
Migration Decisions: Let Women Stay and Men Migrate
As noted above, discriminatory gender practices and attitudes in the pre-migration phase play a significant role. Men dominate the decision to migration, which is often regarded as a family strategy, because they are considered to be the brain of the family and are usually the main source of household income. In such situations, women are left only with the choice to agree with and support their husband’s decision. When the husbands were asked if their wives agreed with their migration, the most common answer was that their wives had to agree because they saw migrant work as an investment which carried a greater financial reward than farming. Migration was considered to be more lucrative, and as offering a channel for get rid of rural poverty. As Gangzi, 35, who left his wife and two children in the village, put it:
Why not do it? Suffering from a lifetime of poverty is not an option. (Gangzi)
Another frequent answer, related in a strongly patriarchal manner, was that “women always have long hair but a short vision.” Rural wives were thought to be reluctant to suffer through the process of migration. However, the women in the village voiced complaints in this regard. Their answers suggested to me a feeling of helplessness due to life’s pressures. For example, Hui, 37, whose husband had gone to Zhejiang Province to open a small business, said to me:
He went out to work, and I got all the things at home done myself. What else could I do? There was no other solution. (Hui)
In the example of Mexican international immigrants to the US, migrant husbands sometimes disagree with a wife’s choice to immigrate due to the risk of death and imprisonment entailed by crossing the border (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1992). In contrast, Chinese migrants overwhelmingly considered the economic factors in the first instance. Though there was no guarantee for the migrant husbands that the couple would ultimately be able to reunite their family in the city, economic pressure was reason enough to dissuade their wives from migrating. Some of rural wives initially followed their husbands into the city, but eventually came back earlier than anticipated for family reasons such as childrearing and elderly support. Xuzhou (28, a migrant in Lu’an) told me:
Who wouldn’t want to stay with his wife and children? Our economic circumstances don’t permit it. I want to have a lot of material things; how else could that be achieved? (Xuzhou)
Rural married females are often victims of discrimination in the urban labor market, since companies prefer to recruit young, unmarried women without offering paid maternity leave or benefits (Yang, 2019; Yang & Sun, 2019). As to Yang (2019), it has been called the “Double Penalty of Gender and Motherhood” to show the contradiction between female employment and child rearing. This is another reason why many young wives live in their hometown with their newborn infants. They must leave their jobs once they decide to give birth. In addition, migrants work for meager wages, and the many kinds of urban expenditure prove too high for a migrant family to raise a child in the city. The best solution becomes to send one’s pregnant wife back to the village to minimize living expenses. However, this state of being left-behind is often unsustainable, especially for younger wives. They usually plan to go back to work again when their children grow old enough and become independent.
Zhengzheng, for example, was living at home to take care of her 2-year-old baby, had just returned from Hangzhou. She informed me that after one more year, she would be back in the city. Her husband’s monthly salary was only 5,000 yuan, which alone did not cover the whole family’s expenses. When the baby is 3 years old, they would send her to a local private kindergarten to release Zhengzheng to go back to work. The wives I spoke to often compared themselves with their neighbors and friends, expressing admiration for those that had migrated out together with their husbands to earn money, while they themselves remained in the countryside, suffering the pressures of reality.
Of course, there were also wives who had opposed to the migration decision from the very beginning because of the uncertainties it would mean for the future. They confessed their worries about the fact that there was no guarantee he would ever return, and that their own familial responsibilities were too heavy. Their worries were centered around the idea that the husband would not be able to bring enough money back and meanwhile escape family responsibilities. At home, a giant burden falls on the wife’s shoulders alone, of farming, housework, childcare, and supporting the elderly. Many women also opt to abandon their responsibilities to children and the elderly, following their husbands once their children reach school-age. However, in the case of these left-behind wives, the children or grandchildren remain too young for them to go. Migrant parents do not receive any job security or maternity leave, meaning young children are fully dependent on their care.
New Rewards or New Burdens?
Bearing the dual burden of agricultural production and housework often leaves the wives little time to attend to their children’s education. Furthermore, the lower educational level of many rural wives can limit their capacity to tutor their children or encourage their studies. This often has an effect on their children’s psychology and personality, leading them to become “problematic” children (Zhou et al., 2005). For example, both of Gui’s children, a single mother in Fuli village, dropped out of school and in the end migrated out of the village.
Left-behind rural wives often become the de facto heads of the family in the absence of their husband. The autonomy of left-behind wives increases, giving them more control over their family following the departure of their husband. Nevertheless, there are limits to the resources under their control. The money sent back from the husbands is infrequent and often less than anticipated, especially at the beginning of the migration. Part of the family savings are usually invested toward the cost of migration, which increases the poverty levels of wives in the countryside.
As Marxism notes, women are only liberated once they participate in social labor (Han, 2019). However, in today’s context, rural wives can only be liberated if they take part in rural–urban migration like their husbands. Some of them did engage in small money-making ventures in the village, such as spinning and ironing hats, earning 50 yuan each time. There is a small leather workshop in the village, but the wages there are low, at about 1,000 yuan per month. Working in the village was no guarantee of independence. Economic pressures loom large, especially in the event of emergency. The wives were reliant on their husband as a main source of family income. Meng, now 42, had a heart attack 2 years ago without health insurance. The resulting operation cost more than 10,000 yuan, which was not a small expense for the family. Meng had no choice but to rely on her husband. After borrowing money from relatives and friends, her husband managed to put together all the money for surgery.
Remittances: Big Hopes, Little Rewards
The issue of remittances was surrounded by uncertainty for the left-behind wives. Their migrant husbands are engaged in low-paid jobs such as construction work and driving. At the same time, the cost of living in the city is so high that most migrant workers have no substantial savings despite years of working outside and often get caught in the debt trap. In these circumstances, the economic expenditure of rural wives must be reduced correspondingly, and their living standards therefore remain very low. The rural wives had to tighten their belts to survive. Nianyi, 24, the wife of Fanfan (who worked on a construction site), could not afford to buy meat in the market and could only eat what she grew herself in the courtyard. Fanfan (her husband), for his part, explained that, their salaries are not paid every month.
Some wives even suspect their husbands are squandering money on other women in the city. This led them to make complaints about their husband. For example, Gui, the wife of Xin, who had migrated to Fujian, lamented to her husband:
You enjoy your sweet life in the city and leave the bitter of life to me. You come home twice a year and bring back nothing. Our children need money to go to school, but you have nothing. (Gui)
Gui had once worked at her husband’s factory, but could not handle the physical requirements of strength involved in this work, and eventually returned to the village. The result of rural–urban migration is that men are relieved of their direct responsibilities to the household but remain responsible for distributing the family income. Their left-behind wives, on the other hand, are responsible for most family duties, yet do not access the economic power. This imbalance further disadvantages rural wives with regard to the domestic financial situation.
In addition, many migrant husbands expressed a longing for full financial freedom without any restrictions. They insisted to me that they are free to spend their money and do as they wished, given that they are the moneymaker in the family. Zhao’s income was relatively high among the migrant husbands in this study, but he kept more money for himself. Knowing that his wife, who is living with his son, would not spend too much in the village, he provided them with enough expenses for food and drink. He expressed that he saw himself as the priority as the sole breadwinner of this rural family:
If I am full, the whole family does not go hungry. I work hard to make money, so I can spend as much as I want. I usually send 5,000 yuan to the family every three months. If there is a good construction project, I can earn 10 thousand yuan per month. There are a lot of drivers on the construction site, sometimes we go drinking and hang out together. Driving is not easy. We have the right to have fun. (Zhao)
While Zhao reported his free urban lifestyle and his pride at having a higher income, Xuzhou expressed his worry about Pan’s capability for money management. According to his narrative, a woman should not have too much access to money, otherwise she would spend it all very soon. Husbands also cited concerns for safety reasons; they did not send much money back to the village because the wives were vulnerable and due to the lower levels of theft prevention awareness of those left behind.
Regardless of the various rationalizations, the general message among male respondents was that migrant husbands felt they did have the right to control and distribute the money they had raised. The conclusion from the interviews was that the left-behind wives do not have substantial control over the family’s finances, and play a supporting role only, even when they in practice have become the head of the household. Fundamentally speaking, their status in the family does not change through the migration of their husband. The migrant husbands remain “managers” and “commanders” while the wives remain “partners” and “followers.”
Spousal Separation and “Temporary Spouses”
C. Xu (2010) argues that personality differences between husbands and wives are exacerbated by their physical separation, which increases mental stresses and reduces the satisfaction with their marital and sexual relationship. Following her husband’s migration to the city of Lu’an to work, Pan stayed in the countryside to take on the responsibility of the daily care of their children and her parents-in-law.
You act like a single mother but you do have a husband. Whenever he comes back home, he always just plays on his phone. While he’s migrated out, we seldom contact each other, but that is fine as long as he keeps sending remittances home. (Pan)
Low marital satisfaction has fostered the conditions for extramarital relationships among left-behind wives. One villager told me that there was a man in his forties who would come to the village. He did nothing but haunt the village with a mind to seduce left-behind women in the countryside. He would take advantage of their emotional state and later steal their money. Since extramarital affairs are considered very shameful in the village, women are often afraid to speak out even if they have been robbed, instead staying silent while letting the man get away with it.
The villagers also use many dirty words to curse the kinds of women, calling them “worn-out shoes,” “bitches,” and “whores.” In the countryside, women who have extramarital relationships are punished. On the other hand, a common colloquialism for a man whose wife has cheated is that he’s wearing a green hat.
As noted, in the countryside the old term “worn-out shoes” (poxie) is used to describe women who engage in extramarital relationships. On the wall of an empty house at the front of the village, someone had vandalized in red paint the words: “Your daughter-in-law is a worn-out shoe.” A villager told me that a fat woman had once come to the house to confront the youngest daughter-in-law of the owner and make her confess to her affair with the woman’s husband. The daughter-in-law ran away, but the fat woman smashed the yard and kitchen anyway, saying it was just a warning.
Of course, migrant husbands too are facing separation, outside the village. The many years of physical separation and infrequent communication can lead to couples becoming isolated from one another. Another result of this long-term separation has been the phenomenon of “temporary spouses” among migrant workers. It is a term to describe the special form of extramarital relationships entered into by migrant workers in urban areas. It refers to when married migrant men and women with left-behind husbands live together with another partner while in urban areas, free from the constraints of their marital status.
Such private things are discussed by villagers because the derailment of such families is generally not exaggerated. The old saying “do not air your family’s dirty laundry” aptly describes the norm of maintaining family privacy. Liya’s extramarital relationship was revealed as follows. On a rainy day, Liya went to lie on the road in the village and cried, “I don’t want to live anymore!” This commotion caused many villagers to go see what was going on. A villager who was present at the time informed me what happened.
Liya had been planting cotton for a long time in Xinjiang Province, where he met a woman from Anhui Province who also worked there. The two migrant workers began living together in the temporary spouse format soon after. Liya went home to ask his first wife for a divorce and confessed everything. Liya’s temporary wife had already given birth to a baby boy in secret 3 years previously. In response, his Fuli wife did not cry for long. Rather, she responded that she would accept Liya’s request on the condition that he would take nothing from the house. Liya was unwilling to agree to this because it would leave him with no savings after such a long stint of migration. He lay on the country road protesting his woes, but it was all in vain. Now he had nothing but his temporary wife and illegitimate son.
Liya was just one of several migrant workers I encountered who had temporary spouses outside the village. Once in urban areas, migrant husbands suddenly found themselves isolated, far away from home and having to work hard to satisfy their employers. Unlike their wives, though, there were no constraints on their extramarital relationships. Gui’s husband, Xin had a temporary spouse. There were many teenage girls from Sichuan province in his shoe factory and a relative of Xin told me that he was dating several girls from the factory. Some of the girls knew he was married but they did not care. He was a smooth-talking guy and who knew how to flirt with women. Xin engaged in several relationships with different kinds of women, ranging from teenage migrant workers to married women in the city. Despite having already re-married, Xin hung out with several “friends,” telling his second wife that work was keeping him busy. The world outside never seemed to satisfy his curiosities.
In summary, this section has examined the differences between migrant husbands and left-behind wives in terms of their conception of extramarital affairs. Male respondents admitted that extramarital relationships were a common thing outside, which were sometimes pursued as a form of status, while left-behind wives were made to feel ashamed of their dalliances and keep them top secret. In the city, due to shifting values and peer influence, a massive influx of male migrant workers found themselves in extramarital relationships, while many rural wives were focused on the traditional concept of preserving their marriage. Even when rural wives had extramarital relationships, they were sure to conduct it in a very secretive way.
Conclusion
The goal of the current study was to investigate the gender relationships between left-behind wives and migrant husbands in the context of Chinese rural–urban migration. It has found that women differ from men in their migration experiences. Former studies have also emphasized the gender stratification aspect of migration, but this study has extended these findings through focusing on the left-behind wives, a vulnerable group in the countryside, in relation to their migrant husbands.
Based on various perspectives on gender stratification, it first examined the decision-making process and interactions surrounding migration between rural wives and migrant husbands prior to migration, revealing the dominant role played by rural men in making the migration decision while wives remained passive participants. In this rural village, we found that the left-behind wives took on more duties than before their husband’s departure and suffered greater physical and psychological burdens. While these larger burdens made them the de facto head of the household, this did not improve their social status. Despite the increase in responsibilities, left-behind wives were still economically and psychologically dependent on their migrant husbands. Their wish to stay with their husbands often exacerbated the gender stratification of their experiences.
In line with previous research, this study shows low levels of marital satisfaction among the left-behind rural wives. Unlike existing research, it has examined the gender differences between rural wives and migrant husbands through their differing attitudes and conceptions regarding extramarital relationships, which evidences the privileges of migrant husbands and the vulnerability of their rural wives. Just as Q. Xu (2016) has pointed out, in the process of rapid modernization, the gender concept of Chinese women has not changed into modern but into traditional.
In sum, this study has revealed the gender outcome of Chinese rural–urban migration in a small village and found that the disadvantaged position of left-behind wives in rural migrant families is reflected in all aspects. These findings call for the whole of Chinese society to pay more attention to the issue of left-behind wives and offer more care to this vulnerable group in rural China. First, gender equality and women’s empowerment may be seen as policy goals. Future public policies should further promote left-behind wives’ equal participation in social development and sharing the fruits of social development. Promote gender equality from the policy level, and create a social environment friendly to their development. Second, ensure equal chance of left-behind wives in the labor market and refine the laws and regulations that guarantee women’s employment, so as to help them realize their career and family expectations. Third, improve social services such as childcare, minimize the contradiction between left-behind wives’ employment and child-rearing so as to achieve their work-family balance, and help them avoid the “Double Penalty of Gender and Motherhood” (Yang, 2019). Finally, it is essential to strengthen self-reliance and to realize left-behind wives’ emancipation so as to find their full potential to become capable leaders of their own lives. Empower left-behind wives create strong communities, stable economies, and show the she-power in the rural development and village governance.
This study, with its focus only on women in rural areas, has been not been able to account for the situations of migrant women who must shoulder both family duties and urban jobs. It falls upon future studies to explore whether the greater participation of women in social labor can bring about liberation for migrant wives and weaken the patriarchal systems that have negatively affected these married couples and their families.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper is supported by Qingdao Social Science Planning Programme 2022 “Research on Talent Development of Qingdao,” with Grant No. QDSKL2201165.
