I was surprised by the content covered in this book because Chinese women are supposed to be more conservative in the past. According to Chinese tradition, their…
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is a historical novel pertaining to average people living in northeastern China. Spence’s book is unlike the “typical” social Confucian society China was thought to resemble during the seventeenth century. In this book, ideas of a Confucian family are challenged and can be seen as alternative but non-the-less, Confucian throughout human interaction and specifically in individual behavior. The Confucian ideas of filial piety, suicide, and being subservient are present, yet not as prominent as historians might think in a small town known as T’an-ch’eng.…
Cited: Topley, Marjorie. “Marriage Resistance in Rural Kwantung” in Women in Chinese Society, edited by Marjorie Wolf and Roxane Witke. Stanford University Press:1975. Print.…
Chinese women were treated like slaves and did not have the rights or privileges that men had. Women in Chinese society occupied a low and degraded status. The parents of those being married arranged the marriages in Classical China. The outcome of arranged marriages left women with virtually no voice in the society. Women weren’t allowed to have any ambitions as it was deemed unacceptable. It was believed that women did not need to know how to read and write since their main…
In the documentary, China’s Lost Girls directed by Allan Myers, it goe into China’s One Child Policy. On of the major topics this documentary is the Social Structure of China and how this policy will affect it in the long run. To begin, China’s social structure and culture compared to ours, here in the United States, is far different. China’s culture places more value on men than they do women. Because of that, there is more pressure on the women to help please the needs of the man. Though because of this inconsistency of value between…
Thesis: This article demonstrates that parent’s role in Chinese marriage customs have stayed the same since time immemorial.…
Brown et al. have also produced data attempting to answer this long-standing theory on the purpose of foot binding. In their 2012 paper, Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China: A Reconsideration of Gender, Economics, and Meaning in Social Causation Brown et al preface their data by stating “It has long been assumed that before 1949 Chinese society was hypergamous —that most women married to a “better” household than the one in which they were born.” Despite this belief, they describe “In our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more women married up than down, but in all regions, the majority did not marry hypergamously.” (Melissa J. Brown et al 1035) In an attempt to reconcile this data, which debunks much of the assumptions that John Mao’s preferred theory rests upon, the paper presents a more likely theory: that feet binding was a form of labor control. In their discussion, they write “We deal elsewhere with the question of why footbinding ended, which can be summarized by saying that we have growing evidence that footbinding was a form of labor control to boost the contribution of young girls to handcraft production…We think changes in the larger political economy that threw…
A college girl tells Friedan “If your husband is going to be an organization man, you can’t be too educated. The wife is awfully important for the husband’s career. You can’t be too interested in art, or something like that.” (Friedan, 177). This college student is emphasizing that women should not further their education and not be smarter than men. She also feels that women are alienated since most careers require higher education and the real careers are reserved and already taken by men. Moreover, she expresses that women should not get in a man’s way of success because society believes men are supposed to be more intelligent in everything besides being a housewife that is why she should not pursue a career that requires high education. This could break the abnormal image of women challenging men in their careers. However, if women want real careers and rise greater than a housewife, risk is…
Described as utopian in nature, the Chinese culture is often in pursuit for the perfect individual, a harmonious and structured society where the citizens as a whole create the ideal culture. In a collection of short stories entitled The Bridegroom, author Ha Jin documents this aspect of reality in homeland China. Primarily for the purposes of instruction and satirical verse, Ha Jin, shows how people are trying to find themselves in a society that focuses on the ‘whole’ of the country rather than the individual. He is able to interconnect this theme of individualism through four major stories in the book while presenting ‘Chineseness’ or satire of fictional verse as a way to focus on the changes throughout China and the political discourse that its citizens face.…
In China, gender inequality still exists between husbands and wives; however, ever since 1950, the tendency of gender positions shared in a marriage is increasing. Both traditional and modern marriages require dowries and bride prices from both families, whereas the economic grows, either one side of the family has to disburse more to the other family. Moreover, the one who has higher education or earn the most has the authority in household. Working inequality is still present in some cities of China, however, the unfairness has improved distinctly from the past. The divorce rate is increasing, since women have the right to divorce and freedom to choose. In ancient China, due to women had overwhelmed by domination of men in marriages, marriages…
Even in modern day, many Chinese citizens still follow cultural and traditional expectations which emphasize the concepts of loyalty and responsibility for their nation and their family. Knowing this, China’s government promotes propaganda that morally enforces the people to consider their role in society by devoting themselves to being good citizens—they should follow what the government advises. Most of the propaganda the government makes encourage their citizens to have less children and at an older age to show dedication to their country. Examples of propaganda for the one-child policy include the slogans “Late, Long, and Few” and “Have Fewer, Better Children to Create Prosperity for the Next Generation” (Fitzpatrick and Rosenthal). Not only are the Chinese very loyal to their country, but they also have a strong tradition in preferring males over females. Based on their common beliefs, females tend to get married and move away with their spouse. Males are more valued in the aspects that they are the gender that abides filial piety; they are envisioned to carry on the family name and take care of their…
Yuping Zhang and Emily Hannum and Meiyan Wang. "Gender-Based Employment and Income Differences in Urban China: Considering the Contributions of Marriage and Parenthood." Social Forces 86.4 (2008): 156-159. Web. 2 April 2010. This article is based on the income differences and job opportunities of workers in urban China between men and women and why these differences exist. These authors argue that married women and parents receive the biggest disadvantage amongst female workers in China due to their lack of capital regarding education, energy and financially. These particular women are not able to make as many social connections as men do due to their role in the household and so they are at a great disadvantage. In China’s market it is essential to have these kinds of social connections. It is a capitalistic society where everyone is out for his or herself and so people must use other people to get what they want. If these connections are not present then these urban female workers will not be able to make nearly as much progress and therefore will be much less successful. It is these expectations that cheapen the women and set them at a great disadvantage if they ever plan on having a family and household to upkeep. This lack of opportunity in the article is summarized as a disadvantage of ‘time use’ due to being a wife and having children in comparison to those who do not. However, if a woman were to decide that she didn’t want a family and wanted to primarily focus on her work this would be frowned upon in society, due to how valued the dynamic of family is in China.…
Chinese governor used Confucian values to control whole society. Everyone should follow the unequal rules, especially women. It created lots of unhealthy situations in the society. People just focus on themselves. Women were treated as non human being because marriage was based on economic benefit. “love was considered to be only secondary, while the core relationship remained economic, and was thus controlled by capitalism.” 2 Women were not the first priority in a family but money was the only way to judge something. Woman’s marriage was the jetton for the family. Also, marriage in China are decided by matchmakers. Matchmakers provided the ideas that “marriage is determined by destiny.” It is this theory of predestination that gives rise to such extremely irrational practices as “marriages decided in the womb” and “choosing a partner in infancy.”3If marriage is not based on love, women is just a childbirth tool in a family. It will make the negative circulation because it emphasizes the male chauvinism again and…
The normal ratio of men to women is 105 to 100. In China, the ratio is 118 to 100. The change in this ratio causes there to be 40 million men unable to find a wife (Howden et al.). The one-child policy also caused a lot of girls to be aborted. Men have always carried the family name in China, but the need for the names to be carried on seemed to become more necessary due to the one-child policy. Young women no longer see the need to be married as soon as they can; with so many eligible men, there’s no rush for them. Divorce rates have also gone up recently; unhappy women have no reason to stay with their husbands anymore. There has also been an increase in sex-trafficking and prostitution. Businesses have even been formed selling refugee women from North Korea to poorer Chinese men…
Marriage in China has undergone change during country’s reform and opening period. The major change in the twentieth century is characterized by the change from traditional structures for Chinese marriage, such as the arranged marriage, to one where the freedom to choose one’s partner is respected. This evolved from the development of new rights for women. But in recent years, the concept of "leftover women” has been created by the state media and government in order to pressure women into marrying earlier. And it is a common phenomenon in current China family that parents are eager to let their daughters to get married the sooner the better, parents think if woman don’t get married before 25 or 26, their whole life will be unhappiness.…