Squaring the ('charmed') circle: Normality and happiness of middle-aged married women in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study explores how middle-aged married women in Hong Kong deal with their identity as "si-nai" and their life circumstances as they enter mid-life. The empirical data help elucidate the underlying assumptions of certain theorizations of heterosexuality, such as Gayle Rubin's critique of sexuality in terms of 'good sex' and 'bad sex.' The benefit of a life cycle approach should be recognized, in order to appreciate the situations of middle-aged women, how they may be at a disadvantage due to age, gender and class background and how they feel threatened by younger women who may not be respectable wives and mothers but are in fact high in 'market value.' A multi-dimensional framework is called for in order to understand women's lives, within which sexual values or practices that Rubin discusses are but one variable among a host of other dimensions such as gender, class, age, education, and culture.