Becoming a teacher: a gendered risk aversion strategy among aspirational middle-class women in contemporary China

China’s enduring Confucian ethics maintain a hierarchical, heteronormative gender order at its core, significantly impacting the subordinate role of women within a predominantly male-centric society. This traditional gender order continues to influence China’s governance and family dynamics. Individuals in China, regardless of their sexual orientation, grapple with this normative structure in their daily lives, necessitating constant negotiation. Our study focuses on elucidating the persistence of this gender structure and its intersection with middle-class aspirations by examining one of China’s most feminised professions: teaching. We employ gender and class as our primary analytical lenses to understand how female teachers make career and marital choices influenced by their gendered middle-class aspirations. By doing so, we reintroduce “class” into the analysis of gender-related disparities in China, which is often overlooked. Furthermore, we emphasize the significance of considering gendered class analysis in contemporary discussions on labour issues, highlighting the central role of the heteronormative gender structure in shaping multifaceted inequalities in present-day China.