Exploring rural young women’s lives: the young generation of women in Li village

Since 1949, especially after the implementation of the reform and opening up policy, China has been facing new changes. Multiple ideas influence each other and coexist in today’s China. With the rapid expansion of urbanization in China, rural China is also undergoing profound changes.

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the lives of the young women in the external environment and intergenerational interaction to summarise the evolution of their lives though social, economic, political and cultural change.

I focus on specific areas of their everyday lives (such as: childhood and adolescent years, consumption, migration, education, love, relationships with husbands and in-laws, and filial piety). I also investigate how the women are affected by change, including both the structural constraints on their lives, but also their agency and gendered subjectivities in this thesis.