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Advances in Politics and Economic 
ISSN 2576-1382 (Print) ISSN 2576-1390 (Online) 

Vol. 1, No. 2, 2018 
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113 
 

Original Paper 

The Development of Rural Women’s Specialized Cooperatives in 

China: An Analysis from New Institutionalism Perspective 

Cui Huang1* 
1 Department of Public Administration, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China 
* Cui Huang, Department of Public Administration, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China 

 

Received: August 20, 2018  Accepted: September 12, 2018   Online Published: September 17, 2018 

doi:10.22158/ape.v1n2p113              URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ape.v1n2p113 

 

This paper is supported by General Project of the National Social Science Fund in China “Research on 

the Organizational Development of Rural Women in Rural Governance” (17BZZ065) and the Liaoning 

Province Academy of Social Sciences planning fund project (key project) “Research on the promotion 

paths of Liaoning rural left-behind women’s organizing” (L15ASH002). 

My sincere appreciation is given to my student, Ping Yang working in Chaoyang Women’s Federation 

for the valuable data and research materials provided in this article. 

 

Abstract 

Since the rural declining and feminization of agriculture caused by rapid urbanization in China, the 

women’s specialized cooperatives are an important organizational force to promote the rural 

agricultural economy and empower women. Taking 200 organizations in Chaoyang city of Liaoning 

province as the sample data, this article presents the current situation and existing problems of the rural 

women’s specialized cooperatives in China, and takes the new institutionalism as the basic theoretical 

framework. It analyzes the reasons of the problems from the level of formal institutions and informal 

institutions. In the formal institutions, the policy incentive system lacks rigid implementation measures, 

and there is no effective resultant force among the relevant organizations. In the informal institutions, 

rural women have the insufficient understanding of the prospects of the cooperatives, poor awareness of 

“brand” management and low credibility of the cooperatives. Consequently, promoting the development 

of the cooperatives should also start with reforming these institutions.  

Keywords 

rural women’s specialized cooperatives, formal institutions, informal institutions 

 

 



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1. Introduction 

At present, China is in the process of rapid urbanization. The reality of “rural declining” and 

“feminization of agriculture” has made Chinese rural women’s living conditions very difficult. Heavy 

agricultural production, cumbersome housework and lonely spiritual life are the true portrayal of all of 

these women. It is a well-known fact that all kinds of female organizations can fight for women’s rights 

and promote their development. In this respect, women’s organizations in the Nordic countries have set a 

good example for the world. In fact, boosting the development of rural women’s organizations is one of 

the crucial ways to improve rural economy and empower women. As an important category in rural 

women’s social organizations in China, in recent years, rural women’s specialized cooperatives have 

emerged in rural areas and grown in both quantity and scale more remarkably compared with the other 

types of female social organizations. This article focuses on researching the rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives whose founders are all female and members are all or almost female. The purpose of the 

formation of such organizations is to motivate the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of rural women and 

enhance rural economic growth. Furthermore, the growth of rural women’s specialized cooperatives 

have positively promoted women’s awareness of association and public participation capacity. 

 

2. Literature Review 

2.1 Foreign Scholars’ Research 

Rural women’s specialized cooperatives belong to sub-categories of farmers’ specialized cooperatives. 

There are about 2.6 million cooperative organizations registered in 145 different countries on the planet 

(Grace, 2014), and there are a considerable number of researches on farmers’ specialized cooperatives. 

However, only a few of foreign scholars have directly discussed about rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives. Scholars analyze the functions, organizational nature and internal mechanism of the 

farmers’ cooperatives. From a functional point of view, Sexton Richard believes that the farmers’ 

participation in cooperatives is advantageous to realize scale production, enhance market 

competitiveness and improve the quality of agricultural products (Sexton, 1993). Farmers’ cooperatives 

can provide organizational links between small farmers and modern retail markets (Jos Bijman, 2011). 

Agricultural cooperatives are also tools for the government to uplift economic and social development 

because they can create jobs, increase income, eliminate poverty, and strengthen farmers (markets) in 

modern value systems (Tursinbek, 2018). The nature of cooperatives is generally considered to be an 

effective union between different subjects with the common interests, and a form of vertical integration 

(Emelianoff, 1942). In a broad sense, Yamei Hu shows that cooperatives are organizational forms of 

many independent growers (horizontal relationships) (Hu, 2007). The internal mechanism of forming 

cooperatives is the alliance of stakeholders. There must be a game between relevant stakeholders in this 

alliance structure (Sexton, 1986), and the way of distribution among members and the way of cost 

allocation have a great influence on the formation of cooperatives. 

 



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2.2 Domestic Scholars’ Research 

Since the application of law of farmers’ specialized cooperatives in 2007, the number of farmers’ 

specialized cooperatives in China has grown dramatically. By the end of June 2011, the number of 

registered organizations had tripled, reaching 446,000 (Liu, 2012). A large amount of studies on farmers’ 

specialized cooperatives are conducted by domestic researchers, for instance, the essence of cooperatives 

(Deng, 2016) and classification (Hu, 2017), innovation path (Li, 2016)(Wang, 2010), institutional 

alienation (Feng, 2014), transaction types and governance mechanisms (Cui, 2017), financial 

performance (Xu, 2013), credit issues (Zai, 2013), operational efficiency (Chen, 2015), evaluation and 

decision mechanism (Li, 2015) and the motivation of farmers’ joining cooperatives from the perspective 

of farmers (Liu, 2017)(Hu, 2013).  

The study of rural women’s specialized cooperatives begins with a discussion of women’s participation 

in cooperatives (Chen, 2008) and its influencing factors (Yuan, 2008). The articles on rural women’s 

specialized cooperatives are still rare, and the existing research is mostly based on case studies and 

summarizes their development status (Yuan, 2001) (Piao, 2010). With the strong development of 

feminization of agriculture, the research about this is also paying more attention to the survival situation 

of the special rural groups, that is, the left-behind women. Some scholars have discussed the issues of 

farmers’ cooperatives mainly with left-behind women and the paths of left-behind women (Zhang, 2013) 

taking part in agriculture and animal husbandry cooperatives in some specific areas (ethnic minorities in 

northwest China) (Xiong, 2014). 

In general, domestic and foreign studies on farmers’ specialized cooperatives are high in quantity; 

nevertheless, the studies particularly on rural women’ specialized cooperatives from the perspective of 

gender are rare. This does not adapt with the reality that the rural women’s specialized cooperatives are 

rising in the context of rural feminization. Therefore, this article attempts to explore the existing 

problems in the development of rural women’s specialized cooperatives. 

 

3. Research Methods 

3.1 Theoretical Analysis: New Institutionalism 

As an analytical paradigm widely recognized by the social sciences in recent years, the new 

institutionalism has received more and more attention. “Institutional theory provides the most promising 

and creative lens for us to observe organizations in contemporary society” (W. Richard Scott, 2010). 

North believes that institutions are constraints artificially designed and used for interpersonal interaction 

(Douglas, 1994). Institutions can be composed of informal institutions and formal institutions. Informal 

institutions generally refer to the value beliefs, ethical norms, moral values, customs, ideologies and 

other soft constraints in a society (Lu, 2003); formal institutions refer to a series of policies, regulations 

and other hard constraints that people consciously created, such as political rules, economic rules and 

contracts (Douglas, 1994). This article will take the new institutionalism as the theoretical framework to 

analyze the reasons for existing problems of the rural women’s specialized cooperatives in China. In 



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other words, the development of the cooperatives is restricted by the formal institutions and the informal 

institutions, and in order to solve this problem, we should start with analyzing the two levels of 

institutions. 

3.2 Data Analysis: The First-Hand Information 

The author’s student, Ping Yang is working in the Chaoyang Women’s Federation. Because the 

Federation manages most of women’s organizations of this city in which the women’s specialized 

cooperatives are included, this article can easily obtain rich and detailed data. In addition, the author has 

frequent contact with these organizations which provide first-hand data support for the research. To find 

cooperatives’ status and difficult issues, the article randomly sampled 359 rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives in Chaoyang City, and conducted a detailed sample analysis of 200 rural women’s 

specialized cooperatives randomly selected from them. 

 

4. Development Overview and Existing Problems 

Chaoyang City in Liaoning Province is a prefecture-level city with relatively backward economy and 

many migrant workers. Therefore, the characteristics of feminization of agriculture are more obvious. 

The development of rural women’s specialized cooperatives has a certain scale and has the typicality for 

the research. According to the statistics of Chaoyang Administration for Industry and Commerce, by the 

end of June 2013, there were 1,256 farmers’ specialized cooperatives registered in Chaoyang City of 

which the number of rural women’s specialized cooperatives is 359, accounting for 28.6%. 

4.1 An Overview of the Development of Rural Women’s Specialized Cooperatives in Chaoyang City 

This article has a statistical data analysis on age distribution, education level and type distribution of 

cooperative products of 200 rural women’s specialized cooperatives randomly selected. The general 

sample characteristics are as follows: 

4.1.1 The Cooperative Members Are Mainly the Middle-Aged and the Elderly 

The Tables 1 shows that with the 200 rural women’s specialized cooperatives we surveyed, their total 

number of members is 5,444. There are 1,256 members aged 40 or under 40, accounting for 23% of the 

total member; 2,648 members aged 41-50, accounting for 49%; 1,310 members aged 51-60, accounting 

for 24%; and 230 members over the age of 60, accounting for 4%. It can be seen that the members of the 

cooperatives are mainly the middle-aged and the elderly aged 41-60. This age distribution characteristic 

is also an important factor leading to the lack of organizations’ vitality.  

4.1.2 Cooperative Members Are Under-Educated 

The Table 1 also indicates that there is a decreasing trend in education level of the members of the 

cooperatives we surveyed. The number of members with high school level or below is 5,064, accounting 

for 93% of the total number. In fact, the members’ education level directly affects the breadth and depth 

of cooperatives’ growth. 

 

 



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Table 1. Sample Information of Members of Chaoyang Women’s Specialized Cooperatives 

 Sample distribution Number of samples % 

Age 

40 years old and below 1256 23 

41 to 50 years old 2648 49 

51 to 60 years old 1310 24 

60 years old and above 230 4 

Education  

level 

Primary and junior high school education 3204 59 

Technical secondary school and high 

school education 
1860 34 

College and university degree 378 7 

Graduate degree and above 2 0.04 

 

4.1.3 The Operation Mode of Cooperatives is Mainly Planting and Breeding 

According to Figure 1, the rural women’s specialized cooperatives in Chaoyang City are primarily 

divided into five types: planting cooperatives, breeding cooperatives, fruit industry cooperatives, 

agricultural machinery cooperatives and other cooperatives. Among them, planting cooperatives and 

breeding cooperatives account for 83% of the total number and become the main part of cooperatives. 

 

 
Figure 1. Distribution of Product Types of Rural Women’s Specialized Cooperatives in Chaoyang 

City 

 

4.1.4 The Rural Women-Led Cooperatives Are the Majority of the Organizations 

As shown in Figure 2, there are four ways to set up rural women’s specialized cooperatives in Chaoyang 

City: rural women taking the lead, rural women’s congress taking the lead, female entrepreneurs taking 

the lead, investing enterprises taking the lead.  

The rural women-led cooperatives are the majority of organizations, making up 77.6% of the total 

number. This kind of cooperatives is generally led by rural female elites or large planting and raising 



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households and other farmers are encouraged to participate, forming an operational mechanism of “elite 

people, large households + farmer specialized cooperatives + farmers”. The advantages of this type of 

cooperatives are that relatives and friends are the link, the transparency is higher, and the distribution of 

interests is more balanced. However, the shortcomings are obvious, that is, the cooperatives whose 

members are in acquaintanceship are generally small in number, and the speed and scale of their 

organizational development are also relatively limited. 

The cooperatives led by the women’s congress account for 12.4%, taking the second large proportion of 

the total. With this type of cooperatives, the rural cadres take the lead and attract the participation of 

farmers. They are local specialized production cooperatives in accordance with the development ideas 

“One Town One Product” and “One Village One Product”. Due to the initiative of the rural women’s 

congress, this kind of cooperatives has a strong appeal and high prestige among the masses with its 

tremendous development potential.  

The percentage of the other two types of cooperatives is inconsiderable. The cooperatives led by female 

entrepreneurs account for 8.2% while those led by the investing enterprises have a very small proportion 

1.8%. The investing enterprise-led cooperatives are in the unstable development situation since their 

growth ratio will be restricted by the management benefit of the investing enterprise. 

 

Figure 2. Classification of Rural Women’s Specialized Cooperatives according to the Forming 

Way in Chaoyang City 

 

4.2 The Predicament of Rural Women’s Specialized Cooperatives 

As being in the early stage of development, the rural women’s specialized cooperatives in Chaoyang City 

have been encountering the problems of scale expansion, funds and management. These difficulties, in 

reality, have seriously affected the cooperatives’ growth. 

 



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4.2.1 The Cooperatives’ Scale Are Small 

From the situation we can grasp, the development scale of rural women’s specialized cooperatives is 

generally small. According to the statistical data source provided by Chaoyang Women’s Federation, the 

average number of members registered at 359 rural women’s specialized cooperatives in Chaoyang is 23, 

which is much lower than 80, the average number registered at farmers’ specialized cooperatives in 

China. This reflects that the number of the cooperative members is quite restricted. In addition to the 

limitation of the membership, the cooperatives are currently limited to providing essential services which 

can bring direct, stable and considerable economic benefits to their members: technical information, 

production materials, seedlings, poultry, product recycling and others because of their poor infrastructure 

and the low level of cooperation between them. Furthermore, since most rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives are not closely connected with their members, it is difficult for them to form a business 

community that integrates “production, supply, sales and processing” with capital and interests as the 

link. As a result, their production scale and market competitiveness have been restricted and the function 

of driving the local labor force has not been extended.  

4.2.2 The Funds Are Insufficient 

Most cooperatives in Chaoyang still has weak economic strength, insufficient and unstable sources of 

funds. Most of their available funds are from member contribution and the funds they loaned are also 

small by reason of the difficulty in evaluating the assets of the cooperatives. This shortage of loan and 

financing, as a result, can inhibit their development. Take the Rural Women-led Cooperatives as an 

example. These cooperatives are mainly initiated by ordinary women, and their participants are mainly 

ordinary farmers; hence, the source of funds is basically based on the farmers’ own collection and mutual 

aid. The majority of rural women-led cooperatives in Chaoyang has obstacles to circulating capital and 

finding public service funds. In fact, many of them do not even have their own office spaces, and only 

rely on renting houses or the village committee office to carry out their daily work. Due to such funding 

constraints, many of the cooperatives’ primary and deep processing projects for agricultural products 

cannot be implemented, and their storage and transportation capacity are also limited. Many of their 

practical technologies cannot be transformed into actual productivity. Moreover, due to the information 

asymmetry between cooperatives and related institutions, many cooperatives do not know the relevant 

supporting policies, which is considered one of the main reasons for the shortage of funds. Among the 53 

rural women’s specialized cooperatives randomly selected, only 14 of them have obtained financial 

support from governments at all levels or relevant departments, accounting for 26.4% of the total while 

other cooperatives have not, resulting from their little knowledge about the relevant financial support 

policies. 

4.2.3 Management Needs to Be Standardized 

The cooperatives’ management is still inadequate and needs standardizing. As far as the internal 

governance of cooperatives is concerned, most cooperatives have formulated statutes and rules; 

nonetheless, these statutes and rules are mostly formalistic and have not been strictly implemented. The 



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cooperatives lack their financial management system, and their daily business decisions are often decided 

by a few members of them; as a result, the loose connection between cooperatives and cooperative 

members is increasing. At the same time, due to the limited understanding of management concepts, 

many cooperatives are not closely connected with production and sales. The phenomenon of “paying 

more attention to profit than to service, to distribution than to accumulation” is widespread, which 

negatively affects the sustainability of cooperatives. From the external governance of cooperatives, the 

responsibilities of the relevant administrative departments are not clear enough, resulting in a lack of 

substantive management. Instead of focusing on their management role, these departments are mainly 

concerned about the competitions for fund projects. 

 

5. Analysis to Institutional Reasons 

The status quo of rural women’s specialized cooperatives in Chaoyang City is the typical example of 

many such cooperatives in other cities in China. On this basis, we can conduct an attribution analysis of 

the cooperatives’ above existing development problems. Taking the new institutionalism as the 

perspective, the paper discusses the reasons for the current problems of rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives from the formal institutions and informal institutions. 

5.1 Formal Institutional Constraints 

5.1.1 Lack of Rigid Enforcement Measures in the Policy Incentive Institutions 

In recent years, the Party Central Committee and the State Council in China have had a great contribution 

to the development of farmers’ specialized cooperatives, and have successively introduced a series of 

preferential incentive policies. However, due to the lack of rigid supervision and disciplinary regulations, 

these policies have not frequently carried out by the local departments.  

In terms of direct incentives, the Circular of the State Administration of Taxation of the Ministry of 

Finance on Relevant Tax Policies for Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives stipulates, “The sale of 

agricultural products produced by the members of the farmers’ specialized cooperatives is regarded as 

the sale of self-produced agricultural products by agricultural producers with exemption from Value 

Added Tax (VAT). The agricultural film, seeds, seedlings, fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural 

machinery sold by the farmers’ specialized cooperatives to the members of cooperatives are exempt from 

VAT. The contracts for the purchase and sale of agricultural products and agricultural production 

materials signed by the farmers’ specialized cooperatives and members of cooperatives are exempt from 

stamp duty”. This tax incentive is an important incentive originally, but some local tax departments have 

not implemented this policy rigorously and have been still collecting various taxes from the cooperatives. 

With regard to indirect institutional incentives, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of 

Agriculture have also formulated corresponding policies to promote the growth of farmers’ specialized 

cooperatives. Although the policies formulated by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of 

Agriculture are more stringent in terms of provisions, some enterprises have had opportunistic practice or 

have not strictly implemented them. For example, Guidance of Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of 



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Commerce on Comprehensively Promoting the Work of Farming-Supermarket Docking stipulates, 

“Supermarkets are strictly forbidden to collect unreasonable fees such as entrance fees, sponsorship 

fees, booth fees, barcode fees, etc., and arbitrary default on payment is strictly prohibited”. The rules 

mentioned above have used more specific words such as “forbidden”; nevertheless, in practice some 

commercial chain enterprises have not really followed these rules, and the relevant regulatory authorities 

have not followed up the corresponding punishment for this violation. As the violation fines are 

excessively small, the business are mercenary to do whatever they want. Consequently, the difficulty of 

cooperative products entering supermarket chains has not been solved, which has seriously affected the 

enthusiasm of the cooperative members and the sustainable development of the cooperatives. 

5.1.2 No Effective Resultant Force between the Organizations 

The growth of rural women’s specialized cooperatives is influenced by many major departments: party 

committees, agriculture, finance, industry and commerce, civil affairs, supply and marketing, forestry, 

taxation at all levels and other relevant departments. However, all of these departments have not reached 

the ideal working mechanism which is “government departments taking the lead, competent departments 

holding their business and relevant departments being in good cooperation”. There are always the 

conflicts of interest in the policies implementation among them. From the perspective of “rational 

people” in economics, some members of the departments have not spent more administrative costs on the 

rural women’s specialized cooperatives that cannot directly benefit them. Consequently, the cooperatives 

have not been frequently received information sharing, strong management forces, and support from 

other departments. 

5.2 Informal Institutional Constraints 

5.2.1 Rural Women Lack Awareness to the Prospects for Cooperatives 

The fact that a majority of rural women of the cooperatives have low level of education as the previous 

data shows is a barrier for their development. The rural women lack knowledge of management 

operation, have low skills in market development and weak legal consciousness. They also do not have 

sufficient understanding of the long-term development of cooperatives. In addition, as being in the initial 

growth period, most cooperatives could not employ experts, and their business is limited to providing 

start-up work for seedlings, technical consultation and information provision services. There are huge 

gaps in their development of agricultural products market, brand building and processing and value 

addition. All of the reasons above make rural women have no eager expectation for the development 

prospects of cooperatives. 

5.2.2 The Cooperatives Have Poor Consciousness of “Brand” Management 

Modern agriculture is a knowledge-intensive industry related to good preparations for ploughing and 

sowing, management in production, postpartum processing on the basis of the support of modern 

technology. As an important part of modern agriculture, branding of agricultural products has become a 

necessary demand in the operation of cooperatives. Good branding can help the cooperatives highlight 

their products’ characteristics, increase their income, and promote their long-term growth. However, the 



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rural women’s specialized cooperatives are currently accustomed to satisfying simple farming and 

marketing their primary agricultural products, and have poor consciousness of brand management. This 

issue is manifested by the fact that many of the cooperatives have not registered trademarks to protect 

their legitimate rights and interests. An example to prove this is that only 3 rural women’s specialized 

cooperatives registered their trademarks among 200 cooperatives we surveyed.  

5.2.3 The Credibility of the Cooperatives Is Low 

All of the above problems can trigger the cooperatives’ virtuous cycle of the weak economic strength, 

insufficient investment, low economic benefits to the farmers, leading to the damage of their working 

enthusiasm. The result of this is that the scale of the cooperatives is generally too small, and thus they 

have not been highly recognized by the masses. This reality makes the development of the cooperatives 

limited and further affects negatively their credibility.  

 

6. Conclusions and Discussions 

By the analysis of the cooperatives’ samples of Chaoyang, “a glimpse of the whole leopard”, this article 

shows that this kind of multi-functional organizations, rural women’s specialized cooperatives, is still in 

the early stage of development in China, and needs a lot of improvement in terms of scale, financing and 

credibility. The constraints of the institutions are the deep-seated reasons for its limited development. 

The route to develop such organizations should be constructed at the level of formal institution and 

informal institution. Specifically, the rigidity of formal institution formulation and implementation 

should be strengthened, and the rural women’s specialized cooperatives themselves should also improve 

their system construction gradually. In addition, the relevant departments such as industry and 

commerce, agriculture, taxation, and finance should also be self-disciplined and be in cooperation to 

promote the development of the cooperatives. At the level of informal institution, more experts could be 

recruited to train their members on cooperation consciousness and management methods, enhance the 

awareness of rural women’s practical value of cooperatives and approach more modern business 

concepts. 

As an important kind of rural economic organizations and social organizations in China, rural women’s 

specialized cooperatives can foster rural economic development and alleviate the double burden of rural 

agricultural production and domestic labor in the background of feminization of agriculture. Particularly, 

being a crucial form of rural social organizations, it can participate in the national governance system and 

the modernization of governance capacity which is considered as a vital part of rural governance. By this 

participation, the rural women of cooperatives will have more opportunities to be cultivated and trained 

their public spirit and political skills. 

Certainly, the cooperatives’ development enhancement requires not only the restructuring of the formal 

institutions and the informal institutions, but also the deepening reform of the national political and 

economic system, cultivating the political culture of rural citizens, and improving the awareness of 

association and cooperation among women; in addition, the development of other types of farmers’ 



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specialized cooperatives should be in consideration. 

 

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