Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Beyond Market Meritocracy: Work and Family Care in Chinese Societies

Beyond Market Meritocracy: Work and Family Care in Chinese Societies

Dai, Haijing

Hardcover

Series: International Policy Exchange

General Racism & Ethnic StudiesGeneral SociologyPoverty & Social Work

ISBN10: 0197767109
ISBN13: 9780197767108
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Nov 10 2025
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.26
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.50 Depth: 9.65
Language: English
Beyond Market Meritocracy investigates how employers evaluate and treat male and female employees with varied family care responsibilities in three different labor regimes of Chinese societies - the neo-liberal Hong Kong market under a productivist welfare system, the market-driven private sector of mainland China struggling with the post-COVID-19 economic decline, and the state-supervised public sector of mainland China with socialist legacies. Through extensive and empirical data, it uniquely enriches the existing literature by examining the rationales of employers in the comparisons of different types of family caregivers and non-caregivers and of different labor regimes in China.

While previous studies on family caregivers' dilemmas in the labor market often focus on the incompatibility of family care duties with the capitalist market meritocracy, this book identifies four schemes of rationales among employers in the three labor regimes of China: a market meritocracy of competence, competitiveness, and efficiency; a moral virtuocracy of family care and responsibilities; a cultural schema of gendered division of labor; and structural resources and constraints embedded in labor protection and family welfare policies. The four schemes sometimes corroborate but sometimes contradict one another in different employment contexts, based on which employers construct their evaluations of family caregivers in the labor market.

The multiplicity of employers' rationales demonstrates how their attitudes and practices go beyond merely calculating the market merits of family caregivers, and sheds new light on the complexity in the relationships between workplace organization and labor rights and future directions for work and family policy programs.

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