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Outline of The Paper:: Bingrui Wang Pace Class
Outline of The Paper:: Bingrui Wang Pace Class
Pace Class
This paper will adapt to a narrative style to display the writers research
including the research purpose, the research implications, the whole researching
process etc. This paper will consist of five sessions: the first session, the reason for
the writer having chosen the project topic; the second session, the influences that
results from the research as one experiential learning; the third session, my findings in
this research and the connections between my findings and the existed academic
studies; the forth session, the specific oppression I recognized in this research; the
fifth session, my future exploration. Finally, this paper is not just a report of my
research findings but also is one personal review of the whole learning and
My topic for this course-long project is What difficulty that the female Chinese
immigrants have in their careers?. This topic started from my aspiration that I want
to learn about the life of the immigrant Chinese women in the US. As a matter of fact,
this aspiration had arisen before I came to America, exactly speaking, it was produced
from one of my college courses. When I was a senior in college, we had this elective
course called American Literature. One chapter in our text book introduced the
American immigrants literature in which Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club was talked
about. I also happened to watch the adapted film which has the same name as the
book. At that time, I had been attracted and amazed by the descriptions of the women
s life in the book. Although the theme for this book is about the relations between
mothers and daughters, I still could recognize the differences that brought by living in
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Pace Class
a different culture circle (the American culture). After watching the adapted film, I
become kind of obsessed with learning these women who have quite the same faces,
speak the same languages (of course, their English is much better than mine). I am
amazed by the fact that in the other half hemisphere on the earth, there exist people
who share the same roots with my culture and languages but they actually have total
The curiosity became the first driving force that make me want to know more
about Chinese immigrants, especially women. With what I learned from Pace class, I
became more concerned on these immigrant Chinese women s life. For me this
course-long project became one perfect opportunity to learn about these women who
used to be in books.
My logic for this research is nothing complicated: Step1 Deciding project topic;
questions; Step 4 Looking for interviewees and collecting data; Step 5 Analyzing the
data and making comparasion with other academic studies; Step 5 Sorting out the
analyses and comparasion to reach to the findings and implications. Looking back to
the whole process, I could find, in each step, that there was new knowledge drawn
from my experiences.
In this step, I started thinking my topic from my desire to get to know the female
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Chinese immigrants life. However, life is too broad to explore within just one
course-long project and also I was supposed to find one specific oppression in my
community. Since the researching site is Chinatown, I thought to look into these
Chinese women s working conditions could be one eligible topic. Looking back on
this step, I think the most challenging thing is to narrow the researching topic. I was
so curious to get to know all aspects of the female Chinese immigrants life that it was
hard to me to decide one specific topic. In conclusion, from this step I got to know
that to decide the researching topic or researching questions is the very first
significant step which might decide whether the research itself will be feasible or not.
Although we might at first have some general directions of the research topics and
might feel reluctantly to delete some ideas , we still need to narrow down the topic
over and over again for the sake of the later execution of the research.
After I decided my topic, there were several researching methods that I could
However, I personally hoped this researching could be one chance for me to talk in
person with those female Chinese immigrants and learned their real life stories
through conversations. Then the idea of interviewing people came into my mind.
Although I had worries that I had to get out of my comfortable zone to talk with
proper one to achieve my goals. Also this new action-interviewing strangers would
When I reached this step, I was so lucky to receive help from one doctoral
student of Sociology Department. We first corresponded with each other via emails
and I wrote my first version of interview questions in those emails. My first version
they had in their work. By talking with my helper then, I got to know that these
me and these explicit questions might not be good intro when having conversation
with people I meet for the first time. Also, the word oppression to some degree is
not conversational and might be hard for people who are not from academia to define
thus the interviewees might be blocked to respond if these direct and explicit
questions asked. After a few alteration on the questions, I finally kept five questions
with the first three as friendly into questions and the left two ones that lead the
interviewees to reflect the possible oppression in their life without using the word
oppression. In this step, I learned that when designing interviewing questions I not
only need to consider the research topic but also need to consider that the possible
responds pumping up if those questions are asked. If these questions make people feel
hard to answer, it will be better choice to redesign all questions. In one word, the
possible responds and the expected responds from the interviewees should also be one
This step was the main and most important part in my research and also was the
most challenging step for me. I had to collect my courage to contact the chargers of
Reflecting on this step, I discovered my new potential. Before I started contacting the
related people and organizations, I expected I would be too nervous and timid to make
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Pace Class
all the phone calls and talk to strangers. However, it turned out to me that I enjoyed
myself a lot in this process because this process allowed me to explore and to discover
and to communicate with people. All the exploration, the discovery and the
communications amazed me so much that I even did not have any moment to worry
about losing face or appearing clumsy. This self-discovery is one of the most
In this step, I looked into the information I collected from my interviews and
tried to make my own implications first and then I compared my data and implications
with other related studies. The reason for me to refer to the academic studies as the
final step is that this research is more like one personal exploration in that I hoped to
execute my research freely and did not want the other related studies confine my
thoughts. My findings arose from this course-long research would probably nothing
new to those related studies and my findings and implications I made might also
probably not completed at all. Despite these flaws in my research results, I believe all
the shortcoming would be payed off by this distinct learning process and the
my future researched.
In this session, I will present my findings and make connections to some other
related studies.
immigrants who work in Chinatown have difficulty that is not from having less
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but is from within the Chinese immigrant community. They have difficulty brought by
their female identities which are opposed to the powerful male groups. This finding is
consistent with the study carried by Shi from 2003 to 2004 in San Francisco Bay
Area. In her study, she made brief introductions of her participants working
conditions and is quite the same with what I found in Philadelphia Chinatown in my
research. Shi also pointed out the Chinese immigrant women usually work for ethnic
usually not satisfying and in order to survive they have to put up with exploitation
from the company owners and their husbands. All these are in line with my findings in
my research.
obedient to the mans authority within the community, they still struggle to advocate
association is aimed at unifying all the Chinese women and offering help to all the
association members. Ms. Chen ( the founder of the association) told me during the
interview, that they help their sisters to deal with their relations with their families
especially their husbands; they also help women to deal with the difficulty in work.
suppression and they wont take it any more. They begin to automatically decide what
their life should be like and how they can make their ideal life out of their
expectations.
Through the interviewing with Ms. Chen, I also got to know that what the
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Chinese immigrant women need is the political representatives and speaks and the
attentions from the mass media. On one hand, they need the political representative to
speak for their needs, on the other hand, they need mass media to highlight their
profile so that people from other culture circle can get to know their life and their
culture.
The specific oppression I can recognize from my research is from two types: the
first, within the Chinese immigrant community, patriarchy; the second, out of the
Within the Chinese immigrant community, women s social status is lower than
men s and women have to consider their husbands first in their family and the male
members in one family like the father , the husband and the adult son maintain
absolute authority over the female members. In workplace, it is the same that the male
supervisor has absolute control and authority over female workers. Chinese women
are usually looked upon and regarded as passive bodies who just need to take orders
by their male counterparts. Although things are getting better recent years, the
traditional notions that Chinese women are inferior to the men die hard. Therefore, the
with the cultural conflicts. In this situation, the Chinese women s gender is blurred by
their identity as Asian people in other words, oppression arises mainly from conflicts
between people from other communities and the Chinese immigrant community,
common and this brings difficulty to all the industries and workers in Chinatown no
From this research, I have one glimpse on the oppression the Chinese immigrant
women in Chinatown have and their needs they have in order to combat the
oppression.
or even outside Philadelphia. Also I will share this researching experience with my
international students could do for the local Chinese immigrant community; so that to
connect the Chinese students within higher education to the local, Chinese immigrant
community.
My future exploration will definitely not confined to this topic and I might
explore other cross-culture issues. With this research as the starting point of my
References
Anesi, J. (2013). Hiring women is a 'recipe for failure'? Gender inequality ignorance
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summed up in one anonymous letter. Air conditioning, heating & refrigeration news,
250, 22
England, P. (2005). Gender inequality in labor market: the role of motherhood and
Fernandez, F. & M., Mors, M. L. (2008). Competing for jobs: Labor queues and
gender sorting in the hiring process. Social Science Research, 37, 1061-80
Shi, Y. (2008). Chinese Immigrant Women Workers: Everyday forms of resistance and
The Joy Luck Club [videorecording] / Hollywood Pictures presents an Oliver Stone
production ; a film by Wayne Wang ; screenplay by Amy Tan & Ronald Bass ;
produced by Wayne Wang, Amy Tan, Ronald Bass, Patrick Markey ; directed by
Wayne Wang.