Burnout market feminism: urban Chinese businesswomen in the internet age

Thesis

Based on a one-year multi-sited ethnography with businesswomen in Shenzhen and Hefei and three-years' working experiences in an online educational platform economy, this thesis makes two main contributions. Theoretically, by using my concept of burnout market feminism, it unravels the puzzle of why women in China thrive in business in the Internet age during a state crackdown on feminism. Burnout market feminism is a critical theoretical combination of Chinese feminist Li Xiaojiang’s market feminism and Korean-German cultural theorist Han Byung-Chul’s Burnout Society. While Li's market feminism contributes the Chinese local perspective with empowerment and contexts at its centre to allow gendered subjectivities and solidarity to burgeon from the market, Han warns us that the Internet age has made us voluntarily self-exploit and burn out. In short, women burn out for market feminism. Empirically, it demonstrates the multiplicities and nuances of businesswomen's lived experiences and negotiations with patriarchy in different social-culture locations. Businesswomen’s negotiation with patriarchy in the Internet age is shaped by the intersectionality of place, gender, age, class and migration trajectory. I compare business ideas, business practices and especially in terms of the well-researched male-centred guanxi practices, and intimacy as well as family practices in three different groups of women. In doing so, I avoid a yes or no monolithic answer to questions such as “are women empowered by the Internet?” and show instead nuanced diversified presences of my interlocutors empowered by their materialistic advancements.

Authors: Tang, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-yrnb95nvj
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Female Entrepreneur; Burnout; Market Feminism; China; Feminism; Burnout Market Feminism; Internet; Chinese Feminism; Byung-Chul Han; Xiaojiang Li; Businesswomen; E-commerce
• Subjects: Sociology; Internet Studies; Women's studies; Platform Studies; Chinese Studies; Gender Studies