by Andrea Ferrario

From dolls that have become a global phenomenon to large technology factories and the delivery sector, a system is increasingly spreading in China that relies on the ability to transform individual needs and family obligations into a virtually unlimited willingness to work. Women themselves are being pushed to abandon stable contracts (guaranteed only on paper) in favour of temporary and seasonal employment.

Milan (AsiaNews) - In the industrial areas of Henan province, thousands of women sew miniature clothes for Labubu dolls, the Chinese commercial phenomenon of the year. Many are over 50 and work 11 hours a day in the factory, then continue for another two or three hours as pieceworkers, tying laces on the shoes of the sewn dolls.

They earn only a few pence per piece, but most of them are not under such severe financial pressure as to justify such additional work. Some describe their decision as a form of addiction that leads them to seek a sense of personal worth through overwork, in a context where the anxiety of ageing prompts them to multiply the hours spent at the sewing machine in order to still feel adequate.

The situation changes radically in large factories in the technology sector, where the motivation is no longer the search for additional income or a social role, but the need to earn a wage that, without overtime, does not even cover essential expenses.

This dynamic is most evident in the Foxconn factories in Zhengzhou, the world's largest iPhone assembly base, where production pressure and performance expectations reach such levels that the gap between what workers hope to achieve and the actual conditions in which they find themselves working becomes even more pronounced. In this context, the so-called “Foxconn Mums” choose to abandon stable contracts, complete with insurance and benefits, in favour of temporary and seasonal employment.

They work for a few months during peak production periods, resign at the end of the season and return to the same factory the following year as new hires. This pattern ends up making factory work more like a form of fragmented and intermittent employment, with the peculiarity that, despite the discontinuity, the workplace formally remains the same.

The mechanism that explains this apparent contradiction lies in the wage structure. The basic wage in Foxconn factories is set at the legal minimum, around 1,900 yuan per month, from which mandatory deductions are made, further eroding pay.

Without overtime, this leaves a few hundred yuan, too little to justify being away from one's family. Overtime thus becomes the only way to achieve an acceptable salary, which can reach up to 6,000 yuan in peak months, but Foxconn grants it as a selective bonus only to those who maintain impeccable work rates and make no mistakes.

Those who are excluded find themselves with an insufficient salary and leave their jobs, quickly replaced by new recruits from the nearby countryside. The apparent freedom to choose more flexible forms of employment masks a mechanism that compresses basic wages and forces female workers to compete for additional hours.

Production and motherhood, the double exploitation of female workers

Behind this apparent fluidity of work lies a division that affects female workers in particular. In electronic assembly factories, access to better-paid technical roles continues to favour men, while those who take on the most strenuous and repetitive tasks are largely female workers with years of unrecognised experience behind them.

With more limited wage prospects from the outset, many accept additional shifts, unpaid breaks or sudden changes in working hours without really being able to negotiate. What is presented as voluntary work is, in fact, a daily necessity.

A similar dynamic can be found in the delivery sector, where female riders have increased by 35% in the last two years, mostly married women with children and whose average age is higher than that of their male colleagues.

They earn less, are penalised by algorithms that favour speed and night-time availability, and, to compensate for these disadvantages, also work on days that should be days off. Physical and safety constraints are thus intertwined with a remuneration model that accentuates gender inequalities.

Added to this pressure is the growing burden of what sociologists call social reproduction. In the countryside of Henan province, the cost of marriage, housing and cars required as dowries reaches figures that are disproportionate to agricultural incomes, while the gradual closure of village primary schools has forced families to turn to private institutions with increasingly expensive tuition fees.

The costs of education and care for the elderly make a stable income essential, and for many mothers this means working in factories.

However, the culture of intensive childcare, now deeply rooted even in rural areas, prevents mothers from working away from home on a continuous basis. For this reason, many of them choose to leave seasonally, entrusting their children to their in-laws only during the summer months when school is closed, trying to save some money during periods of high demand and then returning in the autumn.

This cyclical movement, shaped by factory hours and family responsibilities, generates extremely high turnover, which provides companies with a workforce that is always available and recyclable, thus reinforcing the system. Female labour remains indispensable but, at the same time, easily replaceable, a condition that makes any form of stability or collective solidarity impossible.

Beyond the official narrative

These forms of intermittent mobility are not an isolated phenomenon, but the result of a more profound change. The relocation of factories from the coast to the inland provinces, which began around 2010, laid the foundations for the new regime of precariousness.

The opening of the Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, with hundreds of thousands of employees, marked the beginning of a transformation that then spread to many other provinces. The decision to locate factories close to rural villages made it easier for women with children to enter industrial work, encouraging a steady influx of new labour and profoundly changing the composition of the workforce.

This transformation overlapped with the state campaign to formalise migrant labour. Since 2014, the government has limited the use of temporary staff and promised greater protections, but formal contracts remain largely inaccessible: mandatory deductions absorb a significant portion of the basic wage, and benefits require years of continuous residence in the same city, an unrealistic condition for those who move seasonally between factory and village. Guarantees exist on paper, but not in the daily lives of female workers.

The same structure recurs in only apparently different forms. Whether in factories producing accessories for Labubu dolls, electronic assembly plants or the urban delivery sector, the principle remains the same: the system is based on the ability to transform individual needs and family obligations into a virtually unlimited willingness to work.

What is presented as a personal choice, as flexibility or as an opportunity to earn money, hides an organisation that absorbs every space left free by wage policies and the absence of protections, and that uses women as a continuous buffer against fluctuations in production.

The gap between narrative and reality thus defines the current condition of women's work in China. Precariousness is presented as flexibility and economic dependence as autonomy. Behind the image of empowerment lies a strategy of accumulation based on the segmentation of the workforce and the intertwining of production and care.

Women workers remain trapped in this fragile balance, suspended between ever-increasing economic pressures and social expectations that continue to bind them to the role of mothers and guardians of the family.

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