Moving from Rural to Urban China: How Urbanization Affects Women’s Housework

The present study explores within-gender differences in domestic labor by studying housework variations across five different groups of women in contemporary China. We defined five groups of women according to their urbanization status in general and hukou (i.e., household registration) in particular. (a) Rural natives are women with rural hukou who have stayed in rural areas, (b) rural migrants are women with rural hukou who have migrated to an urban area but have not obtained an urban hukou, (c) policy-based converters are women with rural origins who have converted to being urban residents due to policy privileges, (d) merit-based converters are women with rural origins who have converted to urban residents because of their merit (i.e., education), and (e) urban natives are those who are born urban hukou holders. Multivariate results on a national dataset with 2186 partnered women (aged 18–60) revealed that among women with rural origins, converters spent the least time on housework, rural natives the most, and rural migrants fell in between. Successful converters, particularly merit-based converters, expressed the strongest desire to pursue gender equality and deliberately devoted less time to domestic work. Additional Propensity Score Matching (PSM) analysis that compared women who have migrated to cities with women who have stayed in rural areas provides evidence that moving to urban areas has a negative association with women’s housework time, irrespective of their official household registration status, no matter whether they are migrant women who are not officially recognized or are successfully converted urban women.