Examining the effects of upward social mobility on women's workplace experiences in China.

ABSTRACT: This study examines how upward social mobility shapes Chinese women's workplace experiences by applying social comparison theory and asking which structural-related factors most strongly influence women's perceptions of-and strategies for-occupational advancement in contemporary China. Employing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling on 4,043 Zhihu comments under the "involution" discussion, we identify five operational dimensions-economic reward-value alignment, work burden, institutional environment, resource distribution, and individual agency-that collectively explain variation in perceived mobility opportunities. Our results show that misalignment between compensation and perceived professional worth, coupled with excessive instructional and emotional labor, constitutes a pr

SUBMITTER: Ding W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12492638 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature