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Gaetano, Arianne M. 2015. Out to work: Migration, Gender, and the Changing Lives of Rural 

Women in Contemporary China. University of Hawai’i Press. 184 pp. 

 

Keywords: migration, women, contemporary China, anthropological approach, criticism 

 

Out to work: Migration, Gender, and the Changing Lives of Rural Women in Contemporary 

China (2017) is an ethnographic study of Chinese rural women’s experiences of migration into the 

city at an age of market socialism and globalization. By focusing on the life stories of a group of 

rural women born between 1976 and 1984 who migrated to Beijing between 1993 and 2000 to 

work as domestic workers or hotel housekeepers, Arianne M. Gaetano pays special attention to the 

problem of agency and empowerment. The main argument of the book is that “migration promotes 

agency and advances gender equality by creating more opportunities for young rural women to 

make money, learn new skills or further their education, earn recognition and respect for their 

contributions to their rural households and communities, and exercise greater control in matters of 

marriage and family” (132). This positive stance invites critical scrutinization, which this review 

tries to conduct via an examination of its specific approach of field work. Despite this book’s 

insightful account of rural women’s experience, I argue that this project could be more 

comprehensive if it had claimed more clearly the limitation of such an overly optimistic conclusion 

as a result of choosing highly homogenous interviewees.  

In order to locate the particular points of agency and empowerment, Gaetano examines the 

workings of migrated rural women's’ experiences on three levels. On a macro level, Gaetano 

considers the hidden inequality and marginalized voices in China’s miraculous national project of 

modernization, prompted under market socialism and globalization. On a meso level, these 

migrated rural women’s interactions with the household and the division of labor by sex in the 

work field are explored. On a micro level, the personal trajectory of each woman’s survival story 



 

 

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from a rural woman to a fortunate successful urban sophisticate is examined. Particularly, the 

emphasis on the micro-level exemplifies Gaetano’s “bottom-up” methodology in understanding 

these rural migrant women “who have heretofore been largely ignored or silenced” (13).   

With these three directional focuses, the book is organized into six chapters. The first 

chapter deals with the macro-historical background of the rural women’s migration enabled by the 

policy of “reform and opening.” The second chapter explores the micro-level of individual 

women’s decisions of migration and their subsequent negotiations with the household on the meso-

level. The third chapter discusses the workings of social networks of kin and the principle of 

reciprocity. The fourth chapter highlights migrant women’s participation, creation and obstacles 

while at work. The fifth chapter pays attention to the process of “urbanization” on individual 

migrant women, especially of their interaction with consumer culture. The sixth chapter considers 

the influence of migration on women’s life trajectory and “how this transforms traditional 

courtship, marriage, and family” (12).  

The task Gaetano sets for herself was no doubt an exciting one: to search for evidence of 

agency and empowerment in the state-wide system of social stratification and transformation. This 

style of scholarship has also been widely welcomed by scholars with a feminist perspective since 

locating and presenting the possibilities of agency that individuals can exert are practically 

empowering to women, indicating traces of hope. However, I would like to point out that even 

though it is understandable for a writer to defend one’s stance by diminishing or slightly ignoring 

the other side of the coin, it shall make a stronger claim if the other aspect is also articulated in the 

book. To present “agency” of migrant women, this book presents rare cases of migrant survivors’ 

stories, those who successfully achieved class-transgression. However, this book does not include 

the vast majority of migrant women’s tragic fates while contextualizing the whole picture.  

The limitation of this book’s research is defined by the approach and the availability of 

interviewees. As Gaetano describes, of the thirty migrant women she interviewed, the ones she got 

close with were “all unmarried and under the age of twenty-five,” and the ones she was able to 

maintain regular contact with are also the younger ones, the ones who are familiar with “airmail 

letters, e-mails and instant messages, cell-phone texts” (5). Three factors are at work here: first, 

marriage is a key factor of migrant women’s eventual settlement and with interviewees being 

“unmarried” it automatically denotes more space of mobility and possibilities for them; second, a 

young age also plays a vital role in migrant women’s personal desires and aspirations, which are 



 

 

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identified as significant in the class-transgression process; third, the familiarity to technology also 

limits the interviewees to young and promising migrant women with more possibilities. One of the 

most-mentioned stories in the book is the story of Qiaolian, who first worked as a domestic worker 

and then successfully gained education and was then a teacher in Beijing. This trajectory is only 

possible due to the fact that Qiaolian is smart, young, and unmarried, and even with some luck 

involved in her situation as well. On the contrary, the group of migrant women that are left out of 

the picture, therefore, are the ones who are older, unfamiliar with modern technology, or already 

married -- and these are exactly the ones that truly sees no hope and future but sells the body and 

dignity to the modern city at a minimum wage.  

Overall, Gaetano does admit that this project alone is “inadequate” to detail the specificities 

of migrant women’s dilemma. Nevertheless, there is no other analysis of its limitation other than 

this one sentence in the conclusion chapter. The endeavor of this book to locate moments of agency 

of migrant women and presents them not as powerless victims is admirable. However, by focusing 

on the more promising migrant women (the younger, the smarter, and the unmarried) and not 

articulate the severe situation of the older, the more “uneducated,” the married, Gaetano has 

weakened her argument. This project can be strengthened with a more detailed articulation of its 

limitation.  

 

Works Cited: 

Gaetano, Arianne M. 2015. Out to work: Migration, Gender, and the Changing Lives of Rural 

Women in Contemporary China. University of Hawai’i Press.  

  

Tingting Hu is both a cultural critic and a creative writer. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in 

comparative literature at the University of South Carolina and now teaches at Renmin University 

of China as an assistant professor. Her research focuses on women’s narratives, media studies, 

subaltern studies, and contemporary literature, film, and culture in and beyond China. Her 

dissertation “Form and Voice: Representing Contemporary Women&apos;s Subaltern 

Experience in and Beyond China” investigates transnational women authors&apos; multi-media 

narratives. Hu has published academic pieces, essays, stories, and poetry in International 

Comparative Literature, Sino-US Comparative Literature, Rocky Mountain Review, 

Meiwen, ibookreview, iFeng Youth, Literary Dog, and New Poem Frontline. 



 

 

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© 2024 Tingting Hu 

 


