935 research outputs found
Up against Whiteness: the intersectional experiences of Chinese women teachers in the English language teaching industry
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Voices from the margins: a discussion on race, gender, and power in China’s English language teaching industry
No full textRace and racism remain largely unspeakable topics in China, partially due to the Chinese party-state’s denial of the existence of racism. However, race plays a vital role in China’s education field, particularly in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry. My study examines Chinese women teachers’ struggle to establish their legitimacy in the ELT industry where whiteness is the norm. The study finds that the ELT industry is more than a field of language teaching and learning. It is a field that commodifies whiteness, asserting a workplace racial hierarchy that affirms the racialised and gendered subordination of Chinese female teachers in relation to White male teachers
Chinese women teachers’ navigation against middle-class consumers’ desire to possess whiteness
No full textChallenging Intersectional Racism: A Women of Colour Feminist Account of Chinese Teachers in the Private ELT Industry
No full textThis Women of Colour feminist research illuminates Chinese women teachers’ experiences and understandings of how intersectional racism has produced and sustained a “chain of contempt” (*bishi lian* or 鄙视链) in China’s private English language teaching (ELT) industry. This research examines the lived experiences of 18 Chinese women who teach English in China alongside foreign White teachers. They reported being subjected to this hierarchical chain established through differences of race, gender, nationality, and language. Foreign White teachers occupied a dominant position due to their perceived desirability whereas Chinese female educators occupied a subjugated position due to both being demanded and disdained. Through critically discussing the affective dimensions of Chinese women teachers’ experiences of this chain—such as fear, anger, and exhaustion—I argue that Chinese women teachers’ experiences of subjugation in the ELT industry are forged through constructions of racial knowledge in China which imagines whiteness as profitable, desirable, and powerful. Over the past three decades, China’s ELT industry has experienced a significant increase in its number of international teachers, who are referred to as foreign teachers (外教, *waijiao*). A rising body of scholarship reveals the perpetuation of whiteness within this industry, examining how race intersects with gender, nationality, and class to disproportionately impact English teachers’ professional lives. However, these studies predominantly focus on the experiences of White teachers, particularly White male teachers, with limited attention paid to how whiteness, as a position of structural advantage, impacts teachers of Colour. This research addresses this gap in knowledge.
The study employed diverse and innovative data collection methods. For example, the researcher created and developed *Tucao* (吐槽), a feminist interviewing approach that is culturally sensitive to the Chinese context, and also used an innovative emotion-map-making method, which allowed participants to visually represent their emotions they associate with particular school spaces. Through a feminist grounded theory analysis, this research amplified these women teachers’ voices, constructing theories around their words and ideas. Consequently, the research provides significant insight into the power hierarchies shaping Chinese women teachers’ felt experiences within the ELT industry.
The study’s core findings revealed how Chinese women teachers felt like alienated and dehumanised second-class citizens due to institutional ELT practices, which constitute these teachers as exploitable in racial and gendered terms by “capitalist” school managers who make whiteness as profitable. The study also illustrated how these teachers felt dismissed by the mothers of their students, whom they disparagingly referred to as braindead mama fans who idolise, and even desire, White, foreign, and preferably male teachers. These same mothers treated Chinese women teachers more like nannies or caregivers than English-language instructors. Third, this study found that Chinese women teachers felt threatened when dealing with unqualified foreign teachers, whom they characterised as “time bombs”. These indigenous theoretical concepts reveal the critical intersection of race and gender that determines Chinese women teachers’ positions within the ELT industry’s power dynamics, a hierarchy shaped by knowledge around the transnational value of whiteness in China, a product of colonial legacies and China’s emerging position within global capitalism.
By amplifying the voices of marginalised Chinese women teachers, this study validates and legitimises women’s experiences and feelings, contributing to the formation of political solidarity amongst Chinese women teachers and their allies. The research sheds light on the challenges faced by these teachers, as well as the strategies they devised for addressing discrimination in their field. A heightened understanding of these women’s experiences can also draw policymakers’ attention to pervasive inequalities in the ELT industry, potentially changing its current status quo by advocating for changes in hiring practices, workplace policies, and regulations. Most importantly, the study highlights the urgency of the need to disrupt intersectional racism in China’s ELT industry, thereby contributing to broader academic discussions on education institutions’ commitment to social justice, diversity and inclusion in the global English-language education sector
Intersections of gender and rurality in rural girls’ education in China
No full textWhile female participation in education has increased at all levels in China with the constitutional gender equality policy, the attendance and achievement gap are still wide between rural and urban students, and rural girls in particular, are lagging behind. Contemporary studies on rural education in China lack an intersectional perspective of combining gender and rurality when studying educational inequalities faced by rural girls. This study draws upon 24 secondary case studies featuring rural Chinese girls’ educational experiences and applies the intersectionality framework to explore how the nexus of gender and rurality impact rural girls’ education opportunities. The findings reveal three themes: 1) gendered expectations and financial difficulties, 2) gendered practices in allocating restricted household resources, and 3) the overwhelming emotional labour that rural girls have to perform in their educational journey. The selected case studies were published between 2000 and 2022 and included participants aged from 9 to over 80 who reflected on their educational experiences from the 1930s to the present. With such expansive periods, this study shows that the meanings of the intersectional categories under exploration and their impacts on rural girls’ education vary with time and contexts. This study contributes to the contextualisation and dynamics of the intersectionality framework in researching Chinese rural girls’ education over time, and calls attention to education inequalities caused by intersectional disadvantages and makes accommodations to provide equal, accessible, and affordable quality education to rural girls in China
Racism in China’s English language teaching industry: English as a race-making technology
No full textThis article argues that racism is pervasive in China's English language teaching (ELT) industry, yet it is often ignored. It presents that English language education in China should be understood historically in a way that recognizes English as a racializing technology. As a race-making technology, English has continued making modern Chinese subjects while also posing a threat to Chineseness in the 21st century. This intertwining of race and the English language has translated into a massive ELT industry in China that reproduces whiteness, influencing hiring practices and preferences for White English teachers. Additionally, race intersects with gender, nationality, and class, leading to a highly racialized and gendered ELT industry, exemplified in discourses of “foreign experts” and “foreign trash” popular in China's context. The article concludes by asserting that the English language, as a race-making technology, has structured the ELT industry, and discussing its implications for future research and practical changes to challenge intersectional racism in the industry.</p
White profitability: an intersectional critique of Chinese women’s reckoning with the English language industry
No full textEnglish language teaching (ELT) is a racially stratified industry that privileges whiteness as a norm. Drawing upon a Women of Colour feminist research design that draws on both racial capitalism and intersectional perspectives, this paper examines the experiences of 18 Chinese women teachers in the ELT industry through an innovative interviewing approach called Tucao. Our study reveals how the ELT industry in China constructs whiteness as a profitable investment for Chinese people–and, in so doing, constructs Chinese women as subordinate, exploitable, and ineffective teachers. These teachers, however, quietly oppose this gendered racism in the workplace. While this study focuses on the Chinese context, the study introduces the concept of ‘White profitability’ to explain how the commodification of whiteness underpins intersectional racism experienced by teachers of colour in the global ELT industry. The study contributes methodologically, empirically and theoretically to the scholarship on racial capitalism, intersectionality, and the commodification of race and gender in educational contexts.</p
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