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This paper examines the motivations and contexts for China's highly educated, financially independent single urban women to willingly participate in parental matchmaking. Based on the analysis of two rounds of in-depth interviews with 25 never-married women in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, we find that their participation in parental matchmaking is best understood as an intergenerational alliance formed to mitigate perceived insecurities. Neo-familism, state-endorsed stigmatization and discriminatory polices explain why parents and daughters both prioritize socio-economic security in mate selection. However, the benefits of this inter-generational collaboration are doubtful and asymmetrical, more beneficial to parents than daughters. We contribute to the literature by specifying how state-promoted discourses, neo-familism and women's lived experiences explain their participation in parental matchmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship suggests that women have disproportionately been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic amidst lockdowns and school closures which have altogether increased women's caregiving burden, unpaid housework and stress levels. Notwithstanding its negative impacts, this article argues that the lockdowns and school closures related to COVID-19 also had beneficial outcomes for some working mothers who had to combine work and family roles. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 39 married working mothers in both formal and informal employment, we find that these women during and after the partial lockdowns in urban Ghana, experienced various outcomes of work-to-family enrichment (increased time spent with family, self-rated improved sleep health, financial security), family-to-work enrichment (reduced family demands, improved work performance and output) and a mix of both (cultivation of life skills, greater personal satisfaction and happiness). Applying a role expansionist framework, we show the 'positive side' of the pandemic for married working mothers who had to juggle work and family demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of couple's decision‐making power consistently show that women disproportionately occupy subordinate positions. Using survey data (N = 400) from an ethnographic study on Ghanaian female fisherfolk, we examine the influences of women's financial contributions, ownership of production assets and gender role attitudes, and how they interact with the bodily capacities required to perform different fishery tasks to shape women's decision‐making power. Findings show that financial contributions and ownership of production assets remain salient determinants of women's fishery decision‐making power. However, their participation in strenuous tasks dampens the positive relationship between their financial contributions, gender role attitudes and decision‐making power, such that financial contributions become insignificant. Women's decision‐making power varies according to the sex‐typed division of labor in small‐scale fishing, and those who violate it are 'punished'—as evident in their decreased decision‐making power. Attention to the co‐implications of socio‐economic forces and material factors such as women's embodied experiences highlights (1) the specificities of occupational sex segregation and decision‐making in agricultural sectors of developing economies and (2) how such entanglements can be reconfigured to enhance women's decision‐making power in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of couple's decision‐making power consistently show that women disproportionately occupy subordinate positions. Using survey data (N = 400) from an ethnographic study on Ghanaian female fisherfolk, we examine the influences of women's financial contributions, ownership of production assets and gender role attitudes, and how they interact with the bodily capacities required to perform different fishery tasks to shape women's decision‐making power. Findings show that financial contributions and ownership of production assets remain salient determinants of women's fishery decision‐making power. However, their participation in strenuous tasks dampens the positive relationship between their financial contributions, gender role attitudes and decision‐making power, such that financial contributions become insignificant. Women's decision‐making power varies according to the sex‐typed division of labor in small‐scale fishing, and those who violate it are 'punished'—as evident in their decreased decision‐making power. Attention to the co‐implications of socio‐economic forces and material factors such as women's embodied experiences highlights (1) the specificities of occupational sex segregation and decision‐making in agricultural sectors of developing economies and (2) how such entanglements can be reconfigured to enhance women's decision‐making power in such contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong has one of the least affordable housing markets in the world, but little is known about its housing advertisements, which constitute important discourses that shape the cultural ideal of homeownership. In many ways, Hong Kong's property market represents that of other 'global cities', which are important nodes of global culture and capital flows. How do private property developers market housing in this context, where the nature of housing has developed from accommodation to investment/speculation? What can housing advertisements tell us about the nature of housing consumption, the role of the state and housing developers in a global city like Hong Kong? Using both content and textual analyses, this article presents findings from a longitudinal study of Hong Kong's private housing newspaper advertisements between 1961 and 2011 and examines how and why representations of the ideal home have changed. Unlike the existing literature on housing advertisements which are mostly ideological critiques or socio-historical accounts of housing advertisements in consumer capitalism, our analysis utilises insights from Baudrillard's political economy of the sign and Lipovetsky's concept of hypermodernity. Our contextual and longitudinal analysis contributes to the existing literature by integrating temporality with the three modalities of housing consumption, that is, as living space, investment and financial speculation. We argue that from the late 1970s onwards, Hong Kong government policy actively promotes homeownership and a housing hierarchy discourse, as housing advertisements changed from emphasising functionalities and everyday living in 1961–1981, to privatised quality living in 1991–2001, and abstract living and 'hyperindividualistic' political subjectivity in 2011. By demonstrating the increased abstraction of living, the promotion of the hyperreal, and private housing as objects of financial speculation as evidenced in the construction of ideal homes, we illuminate key features of and inequalities associated with housing advertisements in a global city in neoliberal, late capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing transnational mobility of athletes is accompanied by the growing presence of naturalised athletes in national teams, raising questions about the implications for nationalism and national identity in sports. Hong Kong offers a unique context to examine these issues as a Special Administrative Region of China which has its own representative ('national') team despite its non-sovereign status. Using in-depth interviews with 24 informants (fans, players, coaches, etc.), this paper examines how naturalised players from overseas and Mainland China are perceived by stakeholders of Hong Kong football. We found that informants articulated an 'instrumental-plus' discourse about these players, and a 'civic-plus' conception of nationality. Implications for sport and nationalism in the Hong Kong–China context and beyond are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do adolescents negotiate romance in an environment that is hostile to it? Why do they seek out and practice romantic engagements despite negative sanctions? This paper addresses these questions by examining how Hong Kong Chinese adolescents narrate and practice romance in the context of academic determinism – the discourse that academic success is the most important determinant of young people's futures. I discuss how academic determinism shapes their narratives, ideals and practices of romance. I also analyse the paradox of academic determinism – how it simultaneously de-legitimises adolescent romance and fuels young people's desire for it. By focusing on transactions between young people and their environments, this paper makes a unique contribution towards theorising how young people negotiate and practice romance in the context of academic pressure, adult surveillance and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how a group of Hong Kong working mothers use the internet in performing and realizing their paid work and domestic role identities. The internet is a technology-enabled space and also what Michel de Certeau calls a 'practiced place', where its nature and functions are necessarily determined by the actions and practices of agents. Through participant observation and the analysis of a sample of chatroom and forum messages from a user-driven Hong Kong-based parenting website called Happy Land, I examine the relationship between this virtual space and its users. I find that the website has developed beyond its technology-mediated nature into a community of face-to-face friendships and social and emotional support. In effect, this virtual space plays a role in the social reproduction of the contemporary dual-earner family by enabling working mothers who use the website to perform roles in production and reproduction respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]