Centre Fellow Professor Song Jing serves Gender Studies Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor. Her research interests include gender, family, work, migration, urbanization and market transition. Her research covers topics of women's self-employment and entrepreneurship, land development and property rights, dating, cohabitation and marriage, and family relations.
中心研究員宋婧教授為香港中文大學性別研究課程的助理教授。她研究性別、家庭、就業、人口遷移、城鎮化以及中國的市場轉型。她的研究範圍包括女性的自僱和創業活動，土地使用和權益，婚戀觀念和家庭關係等社會現象。
Her recent research examines the role of female cadres in rural politics in three Chinese villages that have been rapidly industrialized and urbanized in recent decades. She also examines how structural constraints and personal traits have interacted with each other in the different contexts of women’s political participation.
她近期的研究關注在中國農村近數十年工業化與城鎮化過程中女性幹部的角色。她探討了在三個村子的不同的地域經濟環境下結構性因素和個人特質如何互動從而影響女性的政治參與過程。
Professor Song has presented different images of rural female cadres in China’s countryside in the process of industrialization and urbanization. In some cases, women cadres did not benefit much from the political capital of their fathers and husbands. Their political engagements have relied more on personal characteristics such as entrepreneurial talents and intermediating skills, and their economic performance and administrative capabilities.
宋婧教授的研究呈現了在農村工業化與城鎮化進程中不同的女性幹部形象。在一些情況下，女性幹部的政治參與沒有直接受益于男系親屬如父親與丈夫的政治資本。她們的個人特質如企业经营管理能力和調解能力，以及在經濟活动和行政方面的表现，在政治參與中發揮着更为重要的作用。
Over time, governments have adopted different priorities and requirements for women to become political activists and role models. When rural industrialization and urbanization became the priorities of local governments under the market reforms, these historical moments provided women with certain opportunities to realize upward social and political mobility beyond conventional women’s tasks.
在不同的歷史時期，政府對女性幹部和領袖角色有過不同的期待與要求。當改革開放以來工業化與城鎮化成為農村基層政府的首要任務，女性幹部得以利用這些歷史機遇在一定程度上擺脫傳統的性別分工，實現從政方面的向上流動機會。
However, it is still common for women to occupy marginal positions in the grassroots leadership and they are expected to play supportive and “intermediating” roles. The persisting patriarchal norms remain a major source of frustration among women cadres, and some choose to conform to the virtuous womanly image to achieve a good reputation that is essential to their cadre work.
然而，女性幹部往往在基層社區政治中佔據邊緣性的崗位並且承擔支援性和調解性的工作。父權文化依然使許多女性幹部對於她們在公共領域中的活動感到為難，而有些女性幹部則選擇遵循傳統性別角色規範來維護自己的形像以利於她們的從政活動。
Caption: Farmland in Harvesting. (Photo credit: SONG Jing)
文字說明：收割中的田野（圖片來源：宋婧）