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Far from home
When women leave their villages to marry
By Christina Gilmartin
March 11, 2003
The market reforms instituted in China in the late 1970s have brought
tremendous changes, both positive and negative for women. During this period,
China has experienced an explosion of internal migration. In addition, this has
been characterised by a shift from a traditional family migration pattern to
the migration of unmarried women.
One aspect of Chinese female migration that has, thus far, not received much
attention outside China is voluntary migration for the purpose of marriage.
Intertwined with both illegal marriage migration and economic migration, this
phenomenon has provided rural women with an important opportunity to improve
their economic status. However, it has also exposed them to unusual risks, as
they moved beyond the security of kinship networks. They may also find
themselves with few resources to rely on if subjected to difficult
circumstances in their new communities.
Women have almost always moved at the time of marriage in China. Marrying
outside the village was held up as a normal and widely accepted practice. But
the marriage market was radically expanded with the introduction of economic
reforms in 1978. Women began to travel much larger distances, crossing county
and provincial borders. Within a few years, some women began to venture
hundreds and even thousands of miles to marry. By 1990, the official census
showed the number of these women on the move had increased to 4,325,747, or 28
per cent of overall female migration in China. The numbers are believed to have
continued to climb in the last decade.
There is some evidence to indicate that illegal marriage trafficking may also
have spurred the emergence of a legal, voluntary marriage migration. In the
first years of the reform era, alarming stories appeared in Chinese and Western
newspapers about women from poor, rural areas falling prey to kidnappers and
being sold as wives to poor farmers.
In order to reduce their isolation in their new homes and create a more
supportive network in an unfriendly environment, these women began to encourage
others from their home villages to migrate. In this way, illegal and legal
marriage migrations became intertwined.
Recent marriage migrations have tended to follow certain distinct geographical
patterns. In general, women come from the poorer areas of the southwest and
travel to the rural areas of the richer sections of the eastern coast,
especially Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Economic factors are critical in the
decisions of those men who marry female migrants. The price of an immigrant
bride is usually significantly less than for a local woman. Marriage migrants
are using a traditional method of social mobility for women: matrimony. Many
end up in much more affluent areas, and may well be satisfied. But many are
never registered as residents and they may not have a marriage licence.
In such cases, women are not able to rely on legal protection if their
marriages fail. And it appears that these marriages are more problematic. Some
studies report that these women experience a higher level of dissatisfaction
with their marriages than women who marry locally.
There may also be a disproportionately high number of migrant brides among the
countless reports of wife battering and female suicides in rural areas.
It also appears that these women are seen as outsiders and face a great deal of
discrimination and hostility in the community. The result is that they cling to
their new families and lead fairly solitary existences, refusing to assume jobs
in the public domain. This relatively hostile environment, coupled with the
lack of relatives nearby, means that the main source of emotional and economic
support for these women is their husband's family. But when these marriages
include conflict, as is often the case, these women can find themselves with
few resources. If the marriages fail before the birth of a child, the women
rarely seek a legal divorce, and instead just leave the community.
While it has been argued that women's participation in these marriage
migrations constitutes a type of female agency, it seems unlikely that the
marriages are contributing to the creation of more egalitarian marriages.
By relying on their roles as wives and mothers to affect this shift from the
poorer to the richer regions of China, they are in fact reinforcing male power
within marriage relationships.
Christina Gilmartin is an associate professor of history at Northeastern
University in Boston. This article is adapted from testimony presented to the
US Congressional Executive Commission on China, Roundtable on Women's Rights in
China's Changing Economy, on February 24.
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