Have Chinese women experienced emancipation or is China as patriarchal as it ever was? Explain your answer.

Title: Have Chinese women experienced emancipation or is China as patriarchal as it ever was? Explain your answer.
Women’s rights and status has always been greatly concerned and discussed by people. Various scholars around the World are interested in comparing women’s status in China from the past until today. Much has been written about women’s status in the family and social structure in traditional China, which can be illustrated by a few quotes from Confucius, such as "A woman's duty is not to control or take charge.", "Women are to be led and to follow others." and "A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him." China is generally viewed as a typical example of a patriarchal society, which emphasizes male dominance and entails female subordination. Patriarchy refers to a social system in which the male is the dominant authority figure central to social organization in areas like political leadership and control of property. In families, fathers hold authority over women and children. Generally, many patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, which means property and title are inherited by the male lineage. In this essay, issues that will be discussed are circled around two areas: whether women has experienced emancipation and if China today is as patriarchal as it ever was.
Women in China have gone through a long period of suffering because they were at the lowest level of status in the society. They basically had no rights because all the rights were men’s rights, including marriage rights, divorce rights, work rights, property rights, political rights, and educational rights (Zhou, 2003). Hence, it is not surprising that Chinese women in those days suffered a lot from the patriarchal and male-dominated social structure, which reinforced men’s political power, physical power and psychological power over women (Zhou, 2003). In the early days, China was deeply influenced by Confucius’ (551-479 B.C.) ideologies, such as the “three obediences and four virtues”, specifically designed as basic guidelines to educate women. The “three obediences” refer to the three relationships that dominate a woman’s life. Before marriage, women as daughters were the property of their father; after they were married, women as wives were under the control of their husbands; and after they gave birth to children, women as mothers were obligated to serve and take care of their sons. Women were always dependent upon males at different stages of their lives and it was a woman’s duty to serve men.
Before twentieth century, marriage was not based on love or romance but linked to economic and social status of the family. Women did not have the rights to marry the person whom they loved, nor did they have the rights to end their marriages by seeking divorces. There is a Chinese saying which clearly illustrates the powerlessness of women in marriage that says, “If you marry a chicken, follow the chicken; if you marry a dog, follow the dog”. Often, a woman’s marriage was arranged by her parents with the emphasis of alliances between two families. She did not have the chance to involve in the selection of spouse but to obey her parents’ commands by getting married at a young age to a man of equal or higher status. There were significant cases that the daughters, seen as property in the family, were sold to another richer family as wives, concubines or even servants in exchange of monetary compensation to support financial needs.
As the Book of Rites by Li Chi says, “Faithfulness is the basis of serving others and is the virtue of a wife. When her husband dies a woman does not remarry; to the end of her life she does not change.”, a woman had to remain faithful to her husband even if he died, she could not remarry (Ebrey, 1990). A man had the rights to initiate divorce, but this was not the case the other way round. According to the literature Da Dai Li Ji, the 7 “outs” and 3 “not outs” were the legal guidelines for a man to divorce his wife if his wife did not abide the rules. The 7 “outs” included the wife could not bear a son, the wife did not respect the husband’s parents, the wife is jealous when the husband marry concubines and the wife is vulgar or has committed adultery. A woman had to share her husband with other females because polygamy was the usual practice in the traditional society in China. Although a man could have only one wife, he was allowed to have unlimited number of concubines. This type of marriage system was predominantly evident in higher ranking and richer social classes.
Ebrey (1990) stated that the footbinding practice was spread among the dancers and courtesans first, and then became popular to the society during Sung dynasty. The society at that time described bounded small feet as sexy and attractive female characteristics, thus encouraged the women to bend their feet and wrap the toes against the feet to create smaller looking feet with intense arches. These painful processes affected women’s ability to move about and perform housework because they had to use canes to walk. The deformation of women’s feet confined them to the home environment and making them dependent on men. Fortunately, this practice was banned by the Manchurian leaders in Qing dynasty, which was the last dynasty in China. However, footbinding practice remained prevalent until 1949 in which it was successfully outlawed by the Republic government.
Patriarchy and patrilineality are central principles of Chinese family and social systems. The use of patrilineal surnames indicated that the family line is passed on from generation to generation through the males. According to Ebrey (1990), the fundamental features of this system include: the idea of property, such as land, as belonging to the family rather than individually owned; however, the property of the family only belong to the men in the family, and it must be divided equally only among the brothers. The females do not stand a share in the property division. In addition, the father has authority and control over women children, including selling his children, arranging their marriage and even disposing of their labour. Giving birth to a daughter was seen as “small happiness” in the family as compared to the birth of a son. The daughters in the family were the first to be sacrificed if the family had monetary needs or did not have enough money to rear all the children. The daughters were killed or sold as servants or concubines in exchange of money. The last feature of the patriarchal system is the belief that women have less ability than men, both intellectually and morally and therefore they are subordinate to men. Women were not encouraged to receive education, especially higher education. They were considered fortunate to have received some basic education, if at all.
In the west, the feminist movements have gone through two major outbreaks, with the first outbreak began between late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, women demanded their rights to work and receive education. The second outbreak started when women demanded for gender equality in the 1970s. In contrast, feminist movements that led to women’s emancipation in China have been part of the country’s social revolution, which differ from the independent Western feminist movements that progressed along with social revolution. Following the fall of the last dynasty, Qing dynasty and the end of imperial rule, a number of Chinese elites and intellectuals introduced Western ideologies that support free love, free marriage and gender equality in educational and work opportunities. This revolution in 1911 brought about massive social changes that were against traditional Chinese customs and practices, for instance, footbinding was outlawed in 1912.
Followed by the New Youth Movement starting from 1915, women experienced emancipation. Women were freed from footbinding which symbolizes oppression and disregard of women’s human rights. For a long time, women were seen as not capable to receive education, to speak in public, to work and to be involved in political affairs. The New Youth Movement increased women’s opportunities in the labour workforce and their access to education. However, this movement only influenced a small number of urban and elite women, leaving the vast majority of women who lived in rural areas behind. Cultural Revolution took place in 1949 after the establishment of the new government, People’s Republic of China. The government was committed to form gender equality and this resulted in major impacts on the lives of most Chinese men and women. Mao Zedong’s famous quote, “Women hold up half the sky.” illustrates the determination of the government to increase women’s status at that time (Li, n.d.).
“The basic law implemented when the People’s Republic of China was first established in 1949 stated: The People’s republic of China shall abolish the feudal system which holds women in bondage. Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in political, economic, cultural, education and social like. Freedom of marriage for men and women shall be put into effect.” (Li, n.d.)
In addition, Marriage Law was implemented in 1950 to protect women’s rights. According to the Marriage Law, prostitution, arranged marriage, child betrothal and concubinage were banned. Marriage is to be based on monogamy system, in which a husband only marries a wife. Every individual has the right to choose their partners based on love and mutual consent. The slogan by the communist party that says, “You’ll return happily from registering a marriage you chose for yourselves.” clearly reflects the freedom of choice for future partners. Both men and women have equal rights in issues about marriage, divorce and economic independence. Women were granted divorce if they were unsatisfied and unhappy about their forced or arranged marriage. This law led to a dramatic increase in divorce rate in China in the early 1950s. It was estimated that the divorce rate at that time was as high as 1.3 per 1000 population (Stacey, 1983).
Since the Cultural Revolution under the rule of communist party, women’s life and status in the society have undergone dramatic changes. On one hand, women experienced emancipation in terms of gaining equality between men and women. Women’s participation and involvement in labour workforce and in higher educational institutions increased greatly as compared to earlier times. However, on the other hand, women had to bear double burden as they gain more independence and rights. Women had to manage the household and at the same time, they had to work to support the family. This problem was more prevalent in rural areas where women had to take up a few jobs to support the family’s financial needs as shown by the Cultural Revolution slogan “Whatever men can do, women can do too!”
Although women’s status was thought to have risen after Cultural Revolution, the One Child Policy which was implemented in the 1978, act as one of the indicators to show the persistence of women’s low status in China. The government limited each family to give birth to only one child in order to control the outburst of population size in China. This policy led to the perpetuation of patrilinealism as the parents underwent sex-selective prenatal screening, abortion and female infanticide to maintain the lineage of the family through a son. This practice of selecting a son over a daughter resulted in gender imbalance, where the male birth ratio was higher than that of the female. It was evident that people in general still preferred a son to a daughter. The traditional mind-set of having a son as the heir to pass down the lineage of the family was still deeply imprinted in most parents’ minds. In the modern society, the only son in the family was treated as “little emperors”. He received all the attention from his parents and grandparents and the best of everything they could provide for he was too precious as the only heir in the family.
To sum up, after studying the history of women’s status and powerlessness in China, it is not deniable that women have experienced emancipation for the gender inequality has been greatly reduced and women’s status has been raised as compared with the past. Many policies and laws have been designed and implemented to protect women’s rights. The general public’s awareness has also been raised over the issue of gender inequality to reduce gender gap in fields of education, workforce involvement and occupational distribution. However, gender differences and inequality are problems faced by China until today. Men have higher income than women for the same types of job. Men are more likely to get the job they desire and men are more socially active outside the home than women. Men have better educational opportunities than women. These situations are more prevalent in rural areas. In a family structure, sons are more preferred to daughters and they gain more priority, attention and importance than women for the continuum of the lineage. The father is still the authority figure and the leader of the family. Therefore, although women have experienced emancipation as compared to the past, China is still as patriarchal as it ever was because men still sit firmly at the throne of higher status in family and society.