Beyond Market Meritocracy

Work and Family Care in Chinese Societies

Bibliographic Data

ID24136348
AuthorsHaijing Dai (0000-0003-4562-3706, Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University Mall, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-11-10
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBeyond Market Meritocracy (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/9780197767139.001.0001
OpenAlexW4414655730
ISBN9780197767139
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited125

The book 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 neoliberal 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 noncaregivers 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.

Care work · China · Construct (python library) · Entitlement (fair division) · Mainland China · Meritocracy · Private sector · Public sector · Welfare · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism