Dilemmas of gender : a discourse analysis of the debate over the female inheritance of land in the New Territories

This study sets out to deal with a personal dilemma about gender, which was triggered by a debate in 1993 over the female inheritance of land in the New Territories. Like many people in Hong Kong who followed the debate, I was torn between supporting gender equality and defending the Chinese tradition in the villages of the New Territories. The present inquiry tries to deconstruct this dichotomy by exploring what gender means in Hong Kong during this period of political transition, and to explore whether gender equality can be compatible with Chinese tradition. Using a discourse analysis method, I look at how different meanings of gender were negotiated in the context of research interviews with seven members of a local feminist organization and four members of an organization of indigenous women. Based on this analysis, I identify three types of gender discourses in three different interview contexts. In interviews where I was suspected of being an opponent, gender discourses were organized around political ideas such as human rights and equality which are prevalent in present-day Hong Kong. These ideas were used by feminist activists as ideological tools to suppress and silence the opposing voice. In interviews where I was constructed as a reporter, gender discourses were organized around stories of personal experience. The indigenous women used such stories to publicize their experiences of being oppressed in the village. In interviews where I was constructed as a friend, gender discourses were organized around political ideas as well. However, these were historicized and re-structured in discourse by one feminist to articulate her own concerns about gender, thereby creating a space for mutual understanding in the process of interviewing. Based on these three sets of discourses, I launch a critique of ideology and argue for an interpersonal politics of gender which enables people to construct different meanings of gender in their everyday lives