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Journal of Vocational Education &

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Vocational training for Liushou women

in rural China: development by design
a b c
Hongxia Shan , Zhiwen Liu & Ling Li
a
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
Canada
b
Faculty of Education, South China Normal University,
Guangzhou, China
c
Institute of Educational Policy Research, Faculty of Education,
Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Published online: 09 Jan 2015.
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To cite this article: Hongxia Shan, Zhiwen Liu & Ling Li (2015) Vocational training for Liushou
women in rural China: development by design, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 67:1,
11-25, DOI: 10.1080/13636820.2014.967797

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 Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 2015
Vol. 67, No. 1, 11–25, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2014.967797

Vocational training for Liushou women in rural China:

development by design
Hongxia Shana*, Zhiwen Liub and Ling Lic
a
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; bFaculty of
Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China; cInstitute of Educational
Policy Research, Faculty of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 02:37 03 April 2015

(Received 20 October 2013; final version received 29 May 2014)

As industrialisation and urbanisation aggressively take hold in China, all possible

labour pools are being tapped to meet the market demands. Liushou women, or
women who stay behind in rural areas as their spouses join the massive migrant
workforce, are one such labour pool. Vocational training has been adopted by
the Chinese state as a development strategy for Liushou women. Against this
background, this paper explores how the current vocational training policies and
programmes have promoted gender equity for Liushou women. Specifically, it
conducts an extensive literature and policy review using a mix of analytical
tools: women’s empowerment framework and the social relations approach. Not
only does it map the changing social relations within which vocational training
for the women is embedded, it also addresses women’s equity in the areas of
welfare, access, conscientisation, participation and control.
Keywords: VET and development; gender and educational training; VET and
the labour market; policy issues; policy analysis

Internationally, rural women have been recognised as a particularly disadvantaged

group in need of focused social attention. In 1979, the UN General Assembly
adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women, which is commonly understood to serve as an international bill of rights for
women. Among other things, the Convention stipulates that states should take
appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas and
to ensure their access to health care, education, and other civil and political rights
and resources. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 1995 reiterates that
‘the plight of women living in rural and remote areas deserves special attention
given the stagnation of development in such areas’ (United Nations 1995). To
empower rural women, the Beijing Declaration spells out a number of strategies, of
which improving women’s access to vocational training, science and technology,
and continuing education is one.
In 2010, the Chinese government reported the progress it has made with regard to
its implementation of the Beijing Declaration (Economic and Social Council 2010).
The report highlights a range of vocational training initiatives for rural women, such
as literacy programmes, practical agro-technology training, training in new

*Corresponding author. Email: hongxia.shan@ubc.ca

© 2015 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd

 12 H. Shan et al.

technologies and new crop varieties, as well as training in agro-businesses and online
business. As vocational training develops in rural China, it has attracted increasing
attention from researchers (e.g. Deng 2011; Lin and Chi 2006). Yet, while the number
of related studies has increased, few have addressed the issue of equitable develop-
ment for rural women. This paper starts to fill the void in the literature. It asks how
vocational training policies and practices have promoted equitable development for
rural women, in particular for Liushou women, an especially vulnerable group of
women left behind in rural areas as their spouses join the massive urban migrant
labour force. Conceptually, this paper is informed by two analytical tools in the tradi-
tion of gender and development studies: women’s empowerment framework and the
social relations approach. Through an extensive literature and policy review, it maps
the changing social relations within which vocational training for Chinese women is
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embedded and assesses the levels of equity experienced by rural women, in particular
Liushou women, in terms of five areas of equity on which women’s empowerment
framework focuses: welfare, access, conscientisation, participation and control.
The following paper is divided into five sections. The first section introduces the
unique phenomenon of Liushou women in China. The second section elaborates
how women have been historically positioned in development projects and what is
meant by equitable development for women from the perspective of gender and
development. The third section describes the research methods, while the fourth
details the findings. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the challenges asso-
ciated with vocational training for Liushou women.

Liushou women in rural China

While there has been a growing literature on international migration in the literature
on vocational education and training (see e.g. Webb 2015), far less attention has
been paid to questions of internal migration within the same country. In 1978, Deng
Xiaoping announced the open door policy in China, which has since ushered in the
era of modernisation for the country. In the past few decades, as economic reforms
deepen, waves of labour pools have been released for the economic development of
the country. Farmers in rural areas, for instance, have long been mobilised to fuel
the economy in the city. Rural migration today is perhaps the largest migratory
movement in the history of China. In 2010, the internal migrant population in China
reached 260 million, 220 million of whom were from rural areas (Statistics China
2010). Interestingly, while male migrants are of different age groups, a majority of
the female migrants are of pre-marital age (Liu and Zhang 2005). Married women
typically stay behind in rural areas to sustain their families. These women have
become known as Liushou women, women staying behind. In 2005, it was esti-
mated that there were 47 million Liushou women in rural China (Zhang 2006).
Many factors have contributed to the phenomenon of Liushou women. Some of
them include regional economic differences, the household registration system and
the gendered ideology that associates women with household responsibilities. Indus-
tries and services are mostly concentrated in urban centres in China, especially in
cities in the east. In contrast, rural economies, especially those in the west, are lar-
gely agriculture based. Industries and services in urban cities have for decades relied
on migrant workers from the rural areas who wish to improve their life circum-
stances through working for a wage. As a result, migration from rural to urban areas
and from the west to the east has become a unique pattern in China.
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 13

The household registration system in China means that, compared to men,

women’s mobility is more restricted. Entitlement to welfare, education and services,
which are generally better provided in urban cities than in rural areas, is largely tied
to individuals’ residential status. Women, children and seniors, who are understood
to be in greatest need of welfare and other social services, cannot access them in
urban areas if they are not registered as urban citizens. Consequently, few migrant
workers can afford to move with their families to the city. Moreover, traditionally,
women are expected to be in charge of the household, while men work outside the
home. This gendered ideology is particularly entrenched in rural areas, where it is
more likely to be understood as natural for women to stay behind to take care of
parents, children, domestic work and the land, while men work in the cities.
While structurally produced, Liushou women are extremely under-served. In fact,
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little social attention has been paid to them until recently. For instance, it was not
until 1996 that the state decided that vocational training and education should target
women in rural and less developed areas, through the Vocational Education Law of
People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国职业教育法). Liushou women did not
become a specific target of vocational training policies until more recently. Studies
of vocational training for rural and Liushou women are even more of a recent
phenomenon. Because vocational training for Liushou women is relatively new, we
believe that it is important to assess where it is heading and how it has addressed
the development of the women. This paper takes up this challenge through an
extensive review of relevant policies, programmes and studies from the perspective
of gender and development.

Equity development for women

Development is commonly understood to be the betterment of people’s living condi-
tions (Nayya 2003). Historically, however, it is the economic aspect of development
that has received the most attention from policy-makers. For a long time, it was
assumed that economic growth would have a positive spillover effect on other
aspects of people’s lives (Burn 2005). In the last quarter of the twentieth century,
various critiques have been directed to this dominant discourse of development. In
particular, it has been recognised that economic growth has not brought about the
same kind of development for everyone. According to a recent study by the United
Nations Development Programme (2013), although the low- and middle-income
countries have witnessed a marvellous gain in terms of gross domestic product
(GDP) per capital, the gap between the rich and the poor in developing world has
expanded by 11% between 1990 and 2010. Feminists, in particular, have pointed out
that women’s status has not improved as a result of economic developments (Burn
2005). Given this context, feminist approaches to development scholarship, such as
women in development (WID) and gender development (GAD), have tried to
address the issue of gender equity in development efforts.
WID is a tradition heavily influenced by western liberalism. It is ‘a distinct blend
of modernisation theory and liberal feminism’ assuming that ‘all women can be
liberated within the capitalist world system’ (Bandarage 1984, 496). It presumes that
the lack of access to capitalist economic activities is the root cause of women’s
subordination, and that including women in the paid labour force and other income-
generating activities would promote their well-being. The WID approach has been
found to be limited in a number of ways. To start with, to advocate for women’s
 14 H. Shan et al.

participation in the public sphere, WID makes efficiency, or what women can con-
tribute to the economy, the rationale for including WID projects. In other words, par-
ticipation in the public sphere as a women’s right in itself is secondary to concern
for economic efficiency. Moreover, it assumes that women are a homogeneous
group, ignoring that women’s experiences differ from culture to culture and place to
place (Razavi and Miller 1995).
In contrast to WID, which focuses solely on women, GAD treats gender as its
unit of analysis. Gender, as conceived within GAD, is a social relation that intersects
with other social differences such as race, age and ethnicity. Gender differences, as
they are perceived from the perspective of GAD, are social, cultural, ideological and
discursive constructs that can either be reproduced or transformed. In practice, GAD
analysis attends not only to women’s inclusion in the economy as the solution to
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women’s oppression but also to the reproduction of gendered differences in all

domains of life (Razavi and Miller 1995). What is more, GAD does not see women
as ‘passive recipients of development’, but rather as ‘architects of their own devel-
opment’ (Burn 2005, 149). This view of women as agents resonates with our con-
viction that women should be centred as the subjects, rather than the objects, of
development. In alignment with GAD, we define equitable development for women
not only as women’s participation in economic activities but also the degree of con-
trol they have over development processes, as well as the changing gender relations
in various domains of women’s lives.

Research and analytical methods

To understand whether vocational training has helped promote equitable develop-
ment for women, we draw on a mix of two GAD analytical tools: women’s empow-
erment framework and social relations approach (March, Smyth, and
Mukhopadhyay 1999). The women’s empowerment framework was developed by
Sara Longwe, a consultant on gender and development based in Zambia. This
framework helps development programme planners understand the practical meaning
of women’s empowerment and equity development (ibid.). The social relations
approach was developed by Nalia Kabeer, a Bangladeshi-born British researcher and
academic on gender and policy issues. It has been used by various governments and
NGOs as a planning framework for development programmes (ibid.). Compared
with other gender analysis frameworks, such as the gender analysis matrix and the
Harvard framework, which emphasise specific roles, resources and activities in local
contexts, women’s empowerment framework and the social relations framework
have a broader focus on the constitution and distribution of power and control in the
material, ideological and institutional domains of life.
The women’s empowerment framework assesses levels of equity and empower-
ment experienced by women in the areas of welfare, access, conscientisation, partici-
pation and control. Welfare refers to women’s access to resources that ensure their
material well-being, such as food, income, shelter and medical care. Access means
access to the factors of production such as land, tools and credit. Conscientisation
refers to a conscious understanding of gender roles and gendered division of labour
as a social and cultural construct. Participation is about women’s equal participation
in decision-making processes, and equal control in decision-making over factors of
production and distribution of benefits (Leach 2003). The women’s empowerment
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 15

framework examines changes in women’s status by looking at the relational

positionality of women, as individuals, vis-à-vis men in the development processes.
The social relations approach complements the women’s empowerment
framework in that it attends to the larger institutional context shaping the power
dynamics of development endeavours (Kabeer 1994; Kabeer and Subrahmanian
1996). The social relations approach is a method to analyse not only the rela-
tionships between people and their relationships to resources and activities but
also how these relationships are reworked through institutions such as the state,
the market, the community and the family (Leach 2003). In particular, it attends
to five dimensions of social relations: (1) explicit and implicit rules, or how
things get done; (2) activities, or who does what, who gets what and who can
claim what; (3) resources, or what is used and what is produced, including
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human, material and intangible resources; (4) people, or who is in, who is out
and who does what; and (5) power, or who decides and whose interests are
served. In asking these questions, the social relations approach seeks to uncover
the core values and assumptions underlying institutional policies and practices
(Leach 2003).
By combining women’s empowerment framework and the social relations
approach, our analysis addresses both local and macro-level issues. It attends to the
individual well-being of Liushou women in relation to their male counterparts work-
ing in urban cities, in terms of welfare, access, conscientisation, participation and
control. Informed by the social relations approach, it also endeavours to makes clear
the social relations shaping the vocational training programmes extended to the
women. Specifically, it explores the social and economic context within which voca-
tional training became a development strategy in China, the institutional complex
coordinating training resources and activities, as well as the core values underlying
the training programmes.
For this study, we conducted an extensive literature and policy review. The key
words that we used for our search were ‘rural women and training’, ‘Liushou
women’, ‘Liushou women and training’, and ‘vocational training in rural China’.
The databases that we searched included the Chinese Periodical Full Text Database
(中文期刊全文数据库), National and International Conference Proceedings Full
Text Database (国内外重要会议论文全文数据库) and Chinese Yearbook Database
Online (中国年鉴网络出版总库) through the Chinese National Knowledge Infra-
structure website (中国知网, CNKI）as well as Theses Full Text (中国学位论文全
文数据库) through WANFANG Data (万方数据). Altogether, we collected 111 arti-
cles on ‘rural women and training’, 349 articles on Liushou women, 144 articles on
Liushou women and training and 193 on vocational training in rural China. Sixty
articles are closely related to vocational training and rural women, while 48 articles
are specifically on Liushou women and vocational training. Meanwhile, we identi-
fied more than 20 state policies related to rural development and vocational training
for rural women in particular, which helped us to better understand the institutional
context of training for rural women. For our data analysis, we started with social
relational analysis, looking at the large and changing social relations within which
training programmes are carried out. We then drew on the women’s empowerment
framework to examine how women’s social status changes as part of their involve-
ment in vocational training projects.
 16 H. Shan et al.

The changing social relations shaping vocational training for rural women
This section examines the changing social relations shaping the development and
delivery of vocational training and educational programmes that target or involve
Liushou women. In this paper, vocational training and education is broadly defined
as training or educational programmes designed to train women on both vocational
and agricultural skills and knowledge.

Industrialisation, urbanisation and building the new countryside: the social and
economic context
Vocational training was not a term that would have been used together with rural or
Liushou women twenty years ago. It was only recently adopted as a development
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strategy in support of China’s ambitious plans for industrialisation, urbanisation and,

most recently, building a new countryside. Economic reform in China is in part
about industrialisation and urbanisation. In 2012, the industrialisation rate in China
(the share of secondary and tertiary industrial output over total GDP) reached 47%,
in contrast to 20% in the US and 30% in Germany (Zhou 2012). Meanwhile,
China’s urbanisation rate, or the proportion of urban population in relation to the
overall population, has increased by leaps and bounds, from the 10.64% in 1979 to
49.68% in 2010 (Niu 2012).
Yet, the greatest race towards urbanisation and industrialisation may have just
begun. A recent feature in The Telegraph (Phillips 2013) showed the world a giant
construction site in the heart of Lanzhou, a city in west China, which is being devel-
oped into an urban centre with high-rise buildings. As per this report, over the next
decade, China is planning to move 400 million people from rural areas to cities.
Based on yet another report, in The New York Times, the ultimate goal of the
Chinese government’s modernisation plan is to fully integrate 70% of the country’s
population, or roughly 900 million people, into urban lives by 2025 (Johnson 2013).
The idea is that migration ‘will create a new, willing workforce to staff the cities’
service industries and factories’ and that it will be easier to launch a large-scale agri-
cultural economy (ibid).
Side by side with its urbanisation plan, the Chinese government has recently
launched a blueprint for a new countryside. In 2005, the Communist Party proposed
that China has to build a new socialist countryside (The Communiqué 2005). This
was detailed in the 2006 Number One document (The State Council 2006), which
outlines the vocational training scheme in this way:
For the development of a socialist new countryside, it is imperative to improve the
overall quality of farmers, and turn them into new farmers who are cultivated, have
technological know-how and know marketing. To continue supporting scientific and
technological training for new farmers, improve farmers’ agrarian skills, and enhance
the use of science and technology for farming. Expand labour transfer training …
increase subsidy standards, and enhance rural farmers’ ability to transfer to non-agrar-
ian sectors. To accelerate the process to develop a market-oriented training mechanism
that is supported by the government, and that involves multiple stakeholders. Govern-
ments of all levels should budget for and increase investment in labour training in the
rural area. To integrate all educational resources to develop vocational and adult educa-
tion. (The Central Government 2005, item 19 – our translation)
Clearly, in the contexts of expansive urbanisation and new rural development, voca-
tional training and education is expected to serve multiple demands. In part, it is
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 17

meant to serve the high-order interest to transfer labour from rural to urban areas
and train farmers to join both the industrial and service sectors. At the same time, it
is meant to train farm workers for the new countryside, in particular for the industri-
alisation and commercialisation of agricultural production, and modernization of
rural lives.

Training provision: institutional complex and multiple players: who’s doing what
As the last quotation above indicates, vocational training provision in the rural areas
of China involves multiple stakeholders. The Vocational Education Law of 1996
specifies that ‘Educational, labour and other administrative departments are responsi-
ble for vocational training within their administrative scope designated by the State
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Council’ (National Peoples’ Congress 1996, item 16). In practice, occupational train-
ing for rural women involves institutions and administrative departments, such as
the All China Women’s Federation (hereafter, the Women’s Federation), the Minis-
tries of Agriculture, Education, and Science and Technology, and the Association for
Sciences and Technology, along with some non-profit organisations and international
organisations. The major platforms for rural training include 380,000 rural farmers’
cultural and agrarian skill schools, 100,000 Women’s Federation schools for rural
women, science and technology networks and spark schools operated by the
Ministry of Science and Technology, the State Administration of Press, Publication,
Radio, Film and Television, and virtual schools run by the Ministry of Agriculture
and the Association for Sciences and Technology (ACWF et al. 2004). These
schools do not necessarily exist independently of one another. In fact, to integrate
resources, local training sites are encouraged to put on different hats, so as to reduce
their operating costs and expand access to funding (ibid). For instance, a secondary
vocational school can be at the same time an agricultural skill training centre, as
well as a sciences spark school.
While it is impossible to enumerate all kinds of training offered by all adminis-
trative departments, it is important to briefly visit the role of the Ministry of Agricul-
ture. The Ministry of Agriculture has traditionally worked in the area of agricultural
knowledge and technology transfer in rural areas. Recent projects include ‘the Green
Certificate Project’, ‘Cross-Century Science and Technology Training for Rural
Youth’, as well as ‘Science and Technology Radioed Home’. The Green Certificate
Project started in 1990 as a process through which farmers receive training on par-
ticular agricultural skills, and get licence from the government or related trades asso-
ciations, should they achieve the basic skill requirements (Guo and Zhu 2002).
Women were rarely a specific focus of the agricultural department until 1995, when
the Ministry of Agriculture and the Women’s Federation jointly held a conference to
discuss issues related to women’s participation in agricultural development. In 1996,
the Women’s Federation and the Ministry of Agriculture announced a project to pro-
mote 100 technologies to 10 million rural women, a project that built on the Green
Certificate Project. In 2004, the Women’s Federation coordinated a conference with
the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Science and Technology, Education, Forestry,
and the Association of Sciences. As a result of the conference, a Number of Deci-
sions on Strengthening Rural Women’s Education and Increasing Their Income and
Wealth (关于加强农村妇女教育培训工作，促进农村妇女增收致富的意见) was
announced. In these decisions, it is deemed that the percentage of women
 18 H. Shan et al.

participants in vocational training projects, such as the Green Certificate Projects,

should reach above 40% (ACWF et al. 2004).
Non-profit organisations operate independently of the Chinese government and,
in the past 20 years, have played an important role in women’s development in rural
areas (Zheng and Yang 2006). For instance, in the middle of the 1990s, Beijing
Nongjianv (Rural Women) Society and Rongjianv Magazine were established. The
Rural Women’s Society then became a non-profit organisation. In 1999, this organi-
sation started a ‘Rural Women Technical School’ where volunteers deliver training
to rural areas, teaching women skills in agriculture, animal husbandry, sewing, hair-
dressing and computer usage. International organisations and communities also have
a share in the training and education of rural women. For instance, in the city of
Zhangjiakou, one of the local offices of the Women’s Federation utilised the Hong
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Kong Return Poverty Relief Fund to set up a grant for women’s training and poverty
relief for rural women (Pei 2009). The World Bank has also provided low-interest
loans to support different development projects (Wu and Jing 2007), although
Liushou women were not a specific target group.

Ideological discourses and programme design and delivery mechanisms:

underlying values
Underlying various training policies and programmes for women, there are some
common ideological discourses that shape the design and delivery of the training
programmes. To start with, as introduced in the beginning of this section, vocational
training is driven by industrialisation, urbanisation and the desire of the state to
build a new countryside. It is part of an effort to redistribute rural workers so as to
enable the social and economic shift in China towards an advanced stage of modern-
isation. As a result, vocational training is in part meant to prepare some rural popu-
lations to move into industries and the services sectors. It is also to enhance rural
famers’ capacity to use science and technology as well as marketing knowledge to
work effectively on the farm and to eventually commercialise and industrialise agri-
cultural production. In other words, vocational training for rural women is a devel-
opment project by state design.
Of note, in the policy documents reviewed, vocational training has not been
solely constructed as an economic strategy. It has also been framed as a social right.
In 1996, with the passing of the Vocational Education Law, vocational education has
been defined as a right for Chinese citizens. It was then again reiterated as a legal
right for women, in particular, in the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the
Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (2005 Amendment) (关于修改〈中华
人民共和国妇女权益保障法〉的决定). The Amendment stipulates that vocational
training is a women’s right and that ‘governments and departments of all levels
should take appropriate measures to organise women from both urban and rural
areas to participate in vocational education and training on practical skills’ (National
People’s Congress 2005 – our translation). This is the first government document
that specifies vocational training as a legal right and social entitlement for women. It
is part and parcel of the government’s endeavour to promote grassroots democracy
in rural villages, in particular its policy commitment to increasing women’s partici-
pation in public decision-making. The Outline for Women’s Development 2001–
2010 (中国妇女发展纲要<2001–2010年>) (The State Council 2001) states that in
order to promote women’s participation in decision-making and management,
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 19

women should make up a certain percentage of community committees and village

management committees. The Law on Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests
(2005 Amendment) also says that ‘an appropriate quota should be reserved for
women in village management committees’ (our translation), which constitutes the
legal provision for women to participate in public affairs (National People’s
Congress 2005).
Public service is a new concept recently introduced to the policy discourse in
China. This notion is clearly manifested in Decision of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China on Several Big Issues on Promoting the Reform and
Development of Rural Areas (中共中央关于推进农村改革发展若干重大问题的
决定) (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party 2008). In this document,
some of the mandates of rural reform are specified in this way:
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Accelerate the establishment of a public service system, and a co-operative economic

base. Make enterprises the backbone of development, other social forces supplemen-
tary support. Combine public services with market-based services, and specialised ser-
vices with general services as the way to build a socialist new agricultural service
system. (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party 2008 – our translation)
This is the first time the term ‘public service’ was used in a state policy. It is also in
this document that agricultural skill transfer is framed as a public service, which
should be publically funded (Zhang and Ji 2007), although it is indicated that the
market is the most effective and efficient way to deliver services to rural farmers.
Prior to the announcement of the policy, 12 counties around the country were turned
into pilot sites for a reform project delegated in 2002 by the Ministry of Agriculture
(Zhu, Bai, and Wang 2005). The reform was meant to disassociate service provision
from public management, encourage entrepreneurship and increase accountability of
service providers towards farmers (ibid). However, the pilot project was not particu-
larly successful. A number of issues emerged, including a lack of capacity on the
part of business organisations, and gaps between agricultural technology provision
and production needs (Jiang and Meng 2007).

Equity experienced by the women

The above review maps the changing social relations within which vocational train-
ing for rural women is embedded. This section examines the extent to which voca-
tional training, a state development strategy, has promoted equitable development
for rural and Liushou women by considering five measures of equity: welfare,
access, conscientisation, participation and control. We collapsed participation and
control under one subheading because few studies we reviewed have addressed the
issue of control. Related studies are largely about women’s participation or represen-
tation of women in leadership and presumably decision-making positions.

Welfare
While development projects are often geared towards greater involvement of women
in economic activities outside of the home, women’s empowerment framework is
first of all interested in whether women have access to basic subsistence and mate-
rial welfare such as food, income, shelter and medical care. Given the extensive
development efforts undertaken in China, it might be expected that the well-being of
 20 H. Shan et al.

rural farmers and women would have improved. State statistic reports, however,
show consistent although somewhat declining poverty rates in rural areas, especially
in areas with a concentration of ethnically minoritised populations (The State Ethnic
Affairs Commission 2005). As well, women in west China are more likely than
those in other places to live in impoverished conditions (Zhang and Zhuang 2010).
With regard to Liushou women, some case studies show that given the absence of
their spouses, they typically take up multiple loads of labour, play multiple roles and
yet end up with minimal economic returns (e.g. Li 2008; Pei 2009). A survey study
in Gansu – a province in the west – for instance, found that Liushou women took
up not only farming but also animal husbandry, as well as other kinds of work, such
as hourly labour and running small businesses. While they laboured year long, 90%
of the women had an annual income of RMB 2,000. In contrast, their spouses made
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between RMB 10,000 and RMB 15,000 a year through their work in urban areas
(Liu 2010).
In terms of social welfare, rural farmers have long been an ignored group, until
recently. In 2002, the State Council announced a new co-operative health insurance
system to cover major illness in rural areas. This system involves individuals paying
premiums, along with the provision of collective support and government subsidy.
In 2009, the State Council further announced an old age pension system for rural
peasants. Through these systems, Liushou women should have the same access to
health benefits and old age pension as other people in rural areas. In addition to
these universal benefits, the Women’s Federation has also provided free health lec-
tures and free check-ups for cervical cancer and breast cancer for women in rural
areas. However, since these welfare services are only recently developed, it is not
yet known to what extent rural populations have accessed and benefited from their
implementation.

Access
While vocational training for rural and Liushou women has gained much policy
attention, there have been mixed reports on the use of the programmes. Some offi-
cial reports by the government suggest mass participation in the training pro-
grammes. Among others, the Women’s Federation (ACWF 2008) reported that
between 2003 and 2008, training has been provided to 120 million rural women and
1.3 million women were transferred from rural to urban areas or motivated to start
their own businesses. Meanwhile, localised studies, often conducted by graduate stu-
dents, suggest a lack of access to training for many women. For instance, in a sur-
vey in Henan (Jiao and Li 2009), 401 Liushou women responded, and only 4.2%
reported receiving training. In yet another study of Liushou women by Li (2012) in
Shandong, more than 70.6% of the female respondents reported never receiving any
kind of vocational training. Among these women, 94.35% wished to receive occupa-
tion-specific training.
As in many other countries (see e.g. Haasler and Gottschall 2015; Høst et al.
2015; Taylor et al. 2015), women’s participation in vocational training is constrained
by a range of barriers. These include a lack of opportunity or resources, heavy
household demand, lack of literacy skills, the need to focus on basic material
demands and gendered ideology assigning women’s role to the household (Lian and
Zhang 2006). Time could be another issue; that is, Liushou women may not have
enough ‘free time’ for training. In Lv’s study (2009), 21.7% of the women did not
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 21

think that they had free time at all, and 48.9% reported having little free time, which
prevented them from participating in training. Furthermore, accessing training pro-
gramme may have been more of a challenge for ethnic minority women. In a study
by Huang and Jiang (2009) of Liushou women in a minority area, they find that the
women were aspiring for more knowledge. However, the training provided is often
disassociated with the local culture, and ignores the low literacy level of the women.
As such, the women were often rendered a silent group in training programmes.
In addition to the above barriers, the availability and quality of trainers has
also been identified as an issue. In Henan province for instance, by the end of
2006, the number of agricultural training centres and schools increased to 19,501,
and the number of instructors 17,281. But on average, there was less than one
instructor for each centre and school. Moreover, the educational level of the
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instructors is generally low (Li 2008). In a survey of 15,776 agricultural trainers

in the province of Zhejiang, a relatively wealthy province on the east, only
5.94% had a university degree and above; 30.24% had a college diploma; and
31.05% graduated from technical secondary schools. The rest were graduates
from primary, middle or high schools. In terms of vocational qualifications, which
are granted to trainers based on their educational backgrounds, work experiences
and work skills, 14.22% of the respondents had no vocational titles, 68.74% had
a vocational title at the primary level, 16.65% at the middle level and 0.39% at
the senior level (Yang 2003). The lack of qualifications on the part of the trainers
has limited the quality of training available to the women, and some of the
trainers may not understand the unique challenges the women face (e.g. Huang
and Jiang 2009).

Conscientisation
One benchmark that the women’s empowerment framework uses to assess women’s
degree of empowerment is people’s consciousness about gender roles and the gen-
dered division of labour. Our review shows that training programmes and related
research have to different extents problematised the gendered ideology that women’s
domain should be restricted to the domestic sphere. However, this ideology is chal-
lenged only to the extent that women should participate in public economic activi-
ties. Little attention has been paid to who would take care of the household when
women take up work outside of the home. What is more, rarely have training pro-
grammes or studies contested the gendered division of labour in the labour market
itself. Instead, many programmes have sought to commodify women’s domestic
skills. As a result, training provided to rural women and Liushou women often falls
into areas traditionally associated with women’s work, such as sewing and caregiv-
ing. In other words, while the training programmes may have helped challenge
women’s place in the domestic space, they have also reinforced the gendered divi-
sion of labour in the market. Such a pattern may be further complicated by other
factors, such as age. For instance, in a study in Sichuan, a province with a strong
agriculture base (Deng 2011), it was found that while some women, often young,
are encouraged to learn a trade to join the labour force in the urban areas or to learn
business and entrepreneurship, others, often older and with little formal education,
are expected to learn agricultural skills. Liushou women typically fall into the sec-
ond category of trainees.
 22 H. Shan et al.

Participation and control

From the lens of the women’s empowerment framework, participation means equal
participation in decision-making processes, while control refers to women’s control
over factors of production and distribution of benefits (Leach 2003). Our literature
review shows that there has been a commitment on the level of government policy
to involve women in decision-making processes. In practice, however, while rural
women and Liushou women in particular may have participated more in economic
activities outside of the home, they may still lack the power to participate in public
affairs and determine the distribution of benefits.
Vocational training may have equipped some rural women with more technical
skills and agricultural knowledge. However, this may not have changed the gendered
power dynamics in the domestic sphere. Women are still less likely than men to be
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the decision-makers at home. For instance, according to a survey of rural women

(Zhen 2008), in terms of product decision-making, 55.8% of female respondents
reported that they deferred to their husbands, seniors or their children and others;
25% reported co-decision-making; 15.5% reported that they were the primary deci-
sion-makers; and 4.6% did not know how their decisions were made. Another study
found that although Liushou women have taken up almost all the labour on the farm
at home, they are not ‘managers’ but rather ‘producers/executors of others’ deci-
sions’. In some villages, animal husbandry and greenhouse vegetable growth were
well developed, but all the people in management positions were men. Women gen-
erally reported that without men, they alone would not be able to carry out any of
the activities (Lv 2009).
At the community level, women’s level of participation in public affairs remains
low. In 2009, Zhili Chen, President of the Women’s Federation, reiterated that to
realise grassroots democracy, it is important to increase the percentage of women in
village management committees. However, she pointed out that although more than
60% of the rural population are women, they accounted for only 17.6% of village
committee members, and only 2.7% of the village committee directors were women
(Chen 2009). Of note, women’s participation in social and public affairs has rarely
been a core concern for vocational education and training. It is rather believed that
once women’s economic position is improved, they will start pursuing political
rights (Shi 2009).

Conclusion and implications

Given that it is only recently that vocational training has been adopted as a develop-
ment strategy for rural women in China and for Liushou women in particular, it
might be too early to determine the extent to which vocational training has promoted
equitable development. Our review of related policies, programmes and research,
however, is a timely exercise. Among other issues, it pinpoints a lack of women’s
involvement in envisioning development and directing development projects for
themselves, which should be noted by vocational training policy-makers, practitio-
ners and researchers alike. Although the policy discourses in China around voca-
tional training and rural development can be read as positive and encouraging, the
modernisation blueprint is being orchestrated from above, with little acknowledge-
ment of the desires, interests and traditions of local communities. Similarly, voca-
tional training programmes are often imposed from above, with priority areas
 Journal of Vocational Education & Training 23

decided by policy-makers external to local communities. Few, if any, studies have

shown that rural women were actually consulted or involved in the design and deliv-
ery of training programmes. At best, women were presented with a training menu
from which they could choose. As a result, the social and cultural interests of the
women and local communities can be easily obscured in training programmes. Thus,
rural women are often positioned as an empty vessel to be filled with practical skills,
so that they can be part of the state orchestrated modernisation project in China. In
other words, women have often been positioned as subjects of deficiency and there-
fore objects of development. Clearly, the ways in which training programmes oper-
ated speak more to the mainstream tradition of WID, rather than GAD, where
women are treated as agents of change.
Our review also shows that, influenced largely by western feminism, researchers
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in China have taken on gender as a lens through which to understand vocational

training practices in rural areas. However, while many studies have addressed gender
differences, few have looked into the power relations that constitute these differ-
ences, or addressed the social and institutional conditions that work to perpetuate
gender differences and gendered social and economic outcomes. Furthermore, few,
if any, studies have questioned how vocational training and education as an institu-
tional practice may itself perpetuate a gendered division of labour. Few studies have
positioned women as knowledgeable subjects with unique needs, interests and
visions of development. The lack of attention paid to women’s visions and knowl-
edge directly contradict the government’s pursuit of grassroots democracy. Given
this context, it is all the more important that spaces be made for women to play an
active role in the design and delivery of training policies and programmes.

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