What is the Problem Represented to be? A problematisation on two child policy in China

In September 2015, China ended the one child policy and opened the two-child policy. However, the focus on fertility and family in public and government discourse is still links to issues of national survival and economic development. This means that women’s social roles are still defined according to the needs and interests of the state, and scripted, first and foremost, as familial. Women are marginalized in the process of government policy formulation and become the recipients of government discourse and/or policy initiatives which continue to define them as mothers and constrain them into family roles. This paper focuses on the two-child policy in China and uses Bacchi’s framework – ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) to problematize the two-child policy from a feminist theory perspective. (Less)