The Identity Construction Of Female White-collars In Metropolis

As a unique group in China’s social structure, urban female white-collars are one of the most important parts of the middle class. The development and expansion of urban female collars represents the higher education level and broader employment of China’s young professional females. With the acceleration of China’s social transformation, people should show more concerns on the career situation, income level, social communication and marriage choice of urban female white-collars. The research on the identity construction of urban female white-collars and especially young ones will provide an important analytical perspective and theoretical framework for the understanding and interpreting of the social structure change and middle class trap, which is of important theoretical value and practical meaning to test and reflect the theoretical path and practical experience of China’s social transformation and mobility.Construction of identity means self-definition of identity and continuous correction of self-construction., which is a series of dynamic process including outer construction force. It is not only the common product of self-identity and social identity, but also the entia of objective existence and subjective effort. It is the complex of static representation and dynamic process as well. Using Giddens’s stucturation theory as the analytical perspective, female white-collars in the foreign enterprises of Shanghai as empirical example, and structural duality to explain the interaction relationship between individual and society, based on the identity images of urban female white-collars, this dissertation attempts to probe into the psychological mechanism of identity construction of urban female white-collars, to explore action logic and realistic trouble from their career identity(fame), materialization identity(wealth) and communication identity(power), to put across this group’s identity crisis and status panic, and to seek the cooperative strategies for identity reconstruction and identity breakthrough. From Giddens’s structuration theory, as a standardized element, urban beauties and identity identification are the ideal presupposition and psychological agreement of the urban female white-collars’identity construction. Career identity, materialization identity and communication identity are respectively the authoritative resource, representative symbol and distributive resource of their identity construction.This dissertation holds that in the context of china’s localization, urban white-collars are the reference of young professional females’identity construction. Continuously seeking higher positions is their direction of identity construction. So far. it is relatively clear to define the identity of white-collars, and vague to define individuals. White-collars are divided into several levels. Fake white-collars go between white-collars and blue-collars and wish to become real white-collars some day. Rock-bottom white-collars want to be promoted to be middle and high level white-collars, and middle and high level white-collars dream to become gold-collars. Most young professional females as interviewees are not sure about their white-collar identity and their identity belongingness is both vague and clear. Some of them are fake white-collars. Most think they should make efforts to reach such degree as white-collar identity. Meanwhile, white-collars’gender difference is very clear, and females shoulder more social expectations than males. The group of urban female white-collars is facing the risk of identity loss and tension, which is to some degree related to inaccuracy or practical path of identity construction. As for the objective measurement of identity construction, there is so far no clear index system. Influenced by such variables as career types, ages, areas, marriage situations, household types, years of working, and house purchasing, urban female white-collars show different states in the process of identity construction. However, their basic dimension and direction of identity construction are almost the same, and the severe identity tension is common among them, which is also the general trend today.In conclusion, in the accelerating period of social transformation, it relates to family harmony, social stability and development to research urban female white-collars from sociological perspective, to explore the production and reproduction mechanism from the two dimensions of social structure and psychology, to analyze and reflect their action logic in professional differentiation, income split, identity differentiation, social construction and so on. From the point of class status, the social structure of relative static social mobility and class solidification is the outer restriction of urban female white-collars’identity construction; from feminism perspective, urban female white-collars shoulder more social pressure than males in identity construction; from the angle of entity return, it is the big issue for urban female white-collars to step out the circle of identity circulation and to carry out identity breakthrough and reconstruction.