Towards a Local Feminist Understanding of Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

This chapter revisits the basic but fundamental concepts in feminist theories: gender and sexuality. By highlighting the historical and socio-cultural constitution of gender and sexuality, this chapter formulates a local feminist framework to account for the gendered and sexual control and resistance Chinese women experience at the workplace. It brings together Western feminist literature of gender and sexuality at work, discussions around sexuality in development studies, and historical studies of gender and sexuality in China. These are rarely, if ever, brought into dialogue, but have something to offer to our nuanced understandings of the Chinese workplace as well as global feminist theorization of gender, sexuality and power.