Chinese Woman

3 Pages 695 Words

Imagine being a Chinese woman in the early twentieth century. Your feet would be bound and you would not be educated. You could only speak when spoken to and would never talk against a male. In theory, you would be seen as a piece of property, to be bought and sold in marriage. Chinese women throughout the ages were seen as less important than men. Although this place set for women has changed over time, it is still in a constant progression to reach equality with the place set for men.
Women were required to take the role of a submissive, passive, and weak being, whereas men were expected to be dominant, aggressive, and strong. These prerequisites were established by the three Chinese beliefs of obedience. These beliefs state that a woman should obey her father when young, obey her husband when married, and obey her adult sons when widowed (Johnson 219). A Chinese woman’s place in society was also set due to the customary practices she endured. Some of these practices included foot binding, inferior nurturing, confinement to the home, concubinage, prostitution, and exclusion from education (Rozman 115).
Even marriage and family life itself put women in an inferior place to men. This was because marriage was a patriarchal practice, in which the woman was expected to leave her own family and native community, and join herself to her husband’s family and place of residence (Johnson 221). As a Chinese wife, the woman was expected to bear at least one male child, preferably two. Male children were seen as more important than females because they could carry on the ancestral name and provide for their parents in old age (Mackerras and York 233).
Chinese women struggled for their rights over the first half of the twentieth century. During this time attention was repeatedly drawn to the increasingly unequal state of women (Rozman 115). These women were fighting for the reform of the traditional family and its values, the right for a ...