Gao will speak at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Lunchtime Speaker Series program from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the South Dining Room. The title of her presentation is “Deadly Needles in the Haystack: Women Heroin Users in the People’s Republic of China.” Admission is free and open to the public.
A native of China and graduate of Heilongjiang University in China, Gao is conducting an extensive study of women drug users, dealers, and prostitutes in the southwestern city of Kunming, known as a vacation spot for emerging newly wealthy Chinese. Heroin became a dominant illegal drug among women in China as economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s began to influence the market economy and led to social changes. Shifting social networks of women as a result of economic reform meant that they were no longer isolated from aspects of society, such as drug use, that previously had been the realm of men, according to Gao.
Since heroin use among women originated in the Kunming region and there are very few systematic studies that document this little known subculture, Gao’s research findings are expected to break new ground on one of the darker sides of Chinese culture. Her research during visits to China in 2005 and 2008 that has included dozens of interviews with drug traffickers, drug users, and prostitutes explores the patterns of women’s drug addiction – from their initiation to heroin use, their economic dependence on the drug-dealing lifestyle and associated prostitution, and, ultimately for some, their connections to other illegal activities.
Gao said that she has also learned during her interviews that many of China’s younger people are turning to other recreational drugs rather than heroin. She plans to pursue that topic during a research visit to China this summer.