Abstract

Since the market-oriented reforms of 1979, China has undergone rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. Accompanying these dramatic social and economic transformations is one of the world’s largest internal migrations. This chapter looks specifically at rural migrant women – the impact of hukou on their movements, the general patterns of their migration and related research literature and research on rural women migrants. The author argues that the life of rural migrant women is intrinsically linked to China’s fast economic reform and development, modernisation and urbanisation, and the dichotomy between rural and urban spaces, as well as to the disparity between regions and genders.