Date : 2024-02-26
Time : 2024-03-06
Urban and Rural Context of Gender Inequality and Adolescent Dating Violence in China: Tilting Toward a Feminist Poststructural Perspective
Speaker: Prof. Nicole W.T. Cheung, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Moderator: Prof. Jing SONG (Associate Professor, Gender Studies Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Abstract
Urban and rural settings in China may make a difference to the effect of gender inequality. The influence of traditional gender norms among urban youth in China may be waning. There is evidence suggesting increasing gender-egalitarian attitudes in urban China, with urban parents being increasingly willing to invest in singleton girls, which eliminates opportunities for parents to discriminate against daughters. The patrilineal culture may render rural girls more vulnerable to partner abuse victimization. Nevertheless, some research on college populations in China found that females are less likely to accept dating violence than their male peers, and this finding did not differ between rural and urban settings. It is possible that Chinese rural girls strive to resist and regain power in a patrilineal culture. This study examines how far urbanity versus rurality matter to gender inequality and the victim-aggressor overlap of dating violence in urban and rural China. Data are drawn from a survey of high school students (N = 5,820) from 32 schools in cities and rural counties in Guangdong and Hunan provinces. Rural girls who endorse traditional gender norms tend to perpetrate dating violence and to be victimized than their male counterparts who endorse traditional gender norms. This pattern is more salient in rural teens than their urban counterparts. These results cast light on the transition from second-wave feminism to third-wave feminism in understanding dating aggression in China.
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by General Research Fund (Ref. No. CUHK14613720) of Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Government of Hong Kong SAR.
Biography
Nicole W.T. Cheung is an Associate Professor at Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is also an Associate Dean (Education) of Faculty of Social Science. She specializes in the sociology of crime and deviance, victimology, the sociology of youth, and addiction and health. She has published a wide range of papers on victimization in relation to gender issues, rural-to-urban migration and health, rural life, and victim–offender overlap based on her past research projects in urban and rural China. Her studies were published in Social Science & Medicine, Youth & Society, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Youth & Adolescence, Journal of Adolescent Health and Health & Place among others. She recently completed a project “Safe Dates Compromised: Understanding the Social and Situated Correlates of Adolescent Dating Aggression in China”. Relatedly, she has started a new project entitled “Dating Abuse Victimization among Young Adult Dating-App Users in Urban China: Do Status, Beauty and Adolescent Exposure to Violence Matter?”. This current project approaches online dating abuse from the victim’s perspective and focuses on young adult female vulnerability to online dating victimization in urban China.