Chinese Gender Roles Essay

Throughout history, gender roles have been the foundation that determines the course of a civilization. These gender roles have undergone a change over time. It is important for every society to re-evaluate its preconceived ideas of gender and determine if that is still the norm for their society. When people think of gender roles we typically have set stereotypes in our head of what that means. Much of the time, what we believe, is not what is actually true. It is often argued what is right and what is wrong.

When it comes to discussing the manners and customs that dominated in China in the past century, numerous topics appear. Thanks to the numerous written testimonies, we can almost reconstruct the life and experiences of people in ancient China. Of course, many of the practices described are not only interesting, but surprising. In this paper I am going to take a closer look at the status of women in ancient Chinese family.

Across cultures, many times similarities lay within them that go unnoticed. It is true that obvious differences set them apart; but if a closer look is taken, it is surprising what can be found. The Chinese culture is obviously different from the American culture, but underneath the surface there are similarities. One of them is how the treatment of women has evolved and changed. Anti-feminism in China has been present since ancient times, and has just recently decreased. Anti-feminism in America has never been as severe as it was in China; however, instead of the value of women gradually increasing over the years - it has reversed. The value of women in America has decreased. There are many similarities between the ancient Chinese women

Women have had changing roles in every society for centuries. Depending on the country, some women have had a harder time achieving equality. One of these countries is China. These women have faced such obstacles as foot binding to concubines. Until the twentieth century women were not considered equals in their society.

Women’s lives in China have changed dramatically throughout reforms in the Qing Dynasty, the Nationalist period, the Chinese Civil War, etc. In the historically male-dominated society, there still is not the gender equality that women have been hoping for. “Millions upon millions of women are missing. They are not lost, but dead: victims of violence, discrimination, and neglect” (Baute). Why should one gender be valued more over the other? Why should one gender be viewed as more important? Females in countries like China are discriminated against, mistreated, and are valued less since many women and girls are not allowed to get an education, the violence/abuse that they have to go through, and because the one-child policy rule that is placed in countries like China.

China is an ancient civilization, patriarchal society, and an extremely large country. Why is China significant in our society? According to the Asia society, the article stated, “more than 1 billion people live in China” (Zimmerman, 2015). The role of women in China has changed drastically at the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The transition of the women’s role was from enslavement and oppression in ancient China, to one of egalitarianism in modern communist China. Chinese women lived with rules by Confucius in his analects for two thousand years. The Confucius doctrine mentioned women were not equal to men because women were inadequate of an academic education. Throughout ancient

Ron Burgundy: "I'm a man who discovered the wheel, and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a 1/3 the size of us...It's science."

The idea of feminism has not always been common. The term “feminism” wasn’t introduced until the 1970s. This shows how society didn’t allow anything that had to due with everyone being equal because of the standards that society constructed. In all the versions of Mulan, I think that Disney’s Mulan was the most strict on her having Ancient China’s role of being a woman. This would be having kids, helping clean around the house and not working for money, but working for her husband and kids. In Disney’s Mulan, her family is more hard on her to be a lady and for her to be the proper role of a women. This is because they went to a “matchmaker” to find her husband, and after saving everyone several times, she was still looked down upon because she was a woman.

We notice that both the bride and groom did not make any arrangement. They did not have any choice but to follow their parents’ will. Once married, women had to serve their husband and their family. They often became a sort of servant to their mother-in-law, to whom they had the obligation to obey. Families were omnipresent in the marriage; it was a very strict marriage where women had no other choice but to listen to men of her family.

During the Qing Dynasty Chinese women roles were more restricted than they had been during the earlier dynasties. According to Women in World history in the 19th China followed the Neo-Confucian or Confucian gender norms. These norms emphasized the family as the primary social unit and supported the dominance of women. Within the Chinese family structure, “one’s position in the hierarchy is determined rank and responsibility. Daughters were expected to obey their parent’s authority, assist their mothers in domestic tasks, and, in wealthier families learn how read and write.” History reflects during the Qing Dynasty the image of foot binding played such a crucial and significant role in gender and social change amongst Chinese women, where

When thinking of gender roles in society, stereotypes generally come to mind. Throughout history these stereotypes have only proven to be true. Major historical events have had a huge impact on the way men and women are seen and treated. In this way, women have always been secondary to males and seen as the fragile counterparts whose job is to take care of the household and most importantly, be loyal to her husband no matter the circumstance. Gender roles throughout history have greatly influenced society. The slow progress of woman’s rights throughout humanities led to an explosion of woman’s rights throughout the 20th century and that trend will only continue on into the rest of the 21st century.

Chinese women have historically retained highly circumscribed roles and statuses that rendered them inferior to their male corollaries. The gender status quo was predicated on a definition of gender as a cultural construct that is performed rather than rooted in biology. Throughout Chinese history, the women’s role in the family was paramount as conceptualized by the concept of Yin and Yang. While men are associated with Yang, the darker and robust force, while Yin represented the cooler and passive female force. As such, the Chinese ascribed to the separate spheres ideology which relegated women to the private sphere within the home while the public sphere was a male preserve.

In traditional Chinese culture, women were inferior to men. They were not allowed to make any decisions concerning their families. Their only purpose in life was to stay home and take care of the households. "A woman's duties are to cook the five grains, heat the wine, look after her parents-in-law, make clothes, and that's all! ...she must follow the `three submissions.' When she is young, she must submit to her parents. After her marriage, she must submit to her husband. When she is widowed, she must submit to her son. These are the rules of propriety." ("The Mother Of Mencius", p.34) That's the principle that was followed in traditional China. Some of the examples of this are discussed in this

Women have had changing roles in every society for centuries. Those who were born in ancient China lived oppressed lives under the constant pressure to live and work by the rules and expectations set by society around them. They were given nearly the same rights as a servant. Things like having a say in how much work they had to do throughout the day, why they had to bind their feet, who they were set to marry, and so on. Women were expected to do all the household jobs such as cleaning, cooking, preparing ancestral offerings and child rearing. Confucius taught that “a woman’s greatest duty is the bear a son.” These roles that were set for women in ancient China are very important to analyze because they allow us to learn from the past and see what must be done in order to not make the same mistake twice. Two articles in Discovering the Global Past, “Mother-in-law Is Cruel” by Zheng Xie and “The Ways of Confucius and Modern Life” by Chen Duxiu, offer this crucial historical insight on women’s roles in family and society in ancient China. Although their means of conveyance vary, both authors portray the idea that by keeping women oppressed, society as a whole will become stagnant which in turn will lead to something that is more inhumane than what is currently present.

Real Lives of Most Men." He says to a friend of his "This must be a