Dong Yige (State University of New York, Buffalo)

From the five feminist activists being detained by authorities on the eve of International Women’s Day to numerous women speaking out about sexual assault against powerful men under the #MeToo banner, in the past few years, a series of high-profile events introduced a new generation of Chinese feminists to the global arena. How to make sense of this new wave of Chinese feminism? Conceptually, this talk maps out the overall landscape of Chinese women’s agitations and contextualizes it in the country’s long-standing class inequality and its deepening crisis of social reproduction. Methodologically, the talk reflects on the advantages and challenges of doing research that connects gender to political economy, two analytical approaches that are oftentimes insulated from each other.

Yige Dong is an assistant professor in sociology and global gender & sexuality studies at the State University of New York, Buffalo. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include political economy, labor, gender, contentious politics, and comparative-historical methods. Dong’s research on Chinese labor politics and feminist movements has appeared in International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Critical Asian Studies, Modern China, among others. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the politics of care work during the rise and fall of industrial socialism in China.