How do the women of The Joy Luck Club deal with sexist structure that oppresses them?

I think that this is the central focus of the novel.  The
exact answer to this question is the novel, itself.  Essentially, I think that Tan wants
to make the argument that sexism is something that is applicable in both the East and
the West.  It looks different in both worlds, but it is there.  It seeks to silence
women and place them in gender stratified boxes.  While the East's sexism is understood
as "tradition," the West's is more insipid, more subterranean.  For Tan, the critical
defense mechanism that all of the women require to deal with such a structure is the
advocacy of voice and the power to empower themselves through their voice.  This looks
different in both cultures.  In China, the girls who became mothers later on were forces
to actively resist a cultural setting that saw the violation of women's rights by men
and even other women as something necessary.  These girls in China had to summon the
courage to raise their voice in protest.  Perhaps, it was done through the channeling of
other loved ones who perished, such as their mothers or other siblings.  Yet, the
raising of voice is what enabled these children who later become mothers to repel the
sexist structure in China and assert their own voice.

In
America, these women see their daughters "swallow their sorrow with Coca- Cola" and
adopt Western ways.  However, the sexist structure is still there.  Tan makes the
argument that these "modern" and "Western" girls still need their Chinese mothers to
impart to them the lessons of the past in dealing with sexism.  This is why each of the
modern Chinese girls have to undergo two changes.  The first is to repel the sexist
structure, as their mothers did in China.  The second is to not dismiss their mothers as
being of the "old world."  In each mother- daughter scenario, there is a reconciliation
of sorts in which daughter must acknowledge that while mother's experience is of the old
world, it is an applicable one because sexism exists. The coping mechanism thus for the
daughters is to embrace the past in their mothers, embrace their identities as Chinese
women, and fuse both into an advocacy of voice in opposing the Western brand of sexism
that they find.  It is here where Tan seems to be making an interesting argument that
the mothers at least understood the experiences of the elders in battling sexism.  This
is something that the more cosmopolitan and younger generation has to undertake in order
to fight the same demon in a different context.