ASIAN 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Foot Binding, Collectivization In The Soviet Union, Mao Zedong
ASIAN 101 – WOMEN IN ASIA
Women in the Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE)
▪ Confucian ideas
▪ Patriarchal: men in control of the family
▪ Patrilocal: married, women go to live with the man’s family
(woman is outsider)
• A woman’s status in the household is determined by her
ability to produce male heirs
• Women are supposed to be loyal and virtuous
▪ Laws (that favored men):
• Men could have concubines
o Have a wife, and other lovers as well
• Men could initiate divorce
o Based on 7 different possible complaints
▪ Barrenness, aka Infertility
▪ If the wife is too talkative
▪ Ban Zhao (45 CE - 115 CE) Han Dynasty
• She wrote Instructions for Chinese Women and Girls
• Advice for women through the Confucian lens
o If you have a baby girl, you are supposed
▪ To let her sleep under the bed for 3 nights on
the floor to teach her place in the world
▪ Give her a spindle as a toy
▪ Announce her birth to the ancestors to tell
her about her duty in the world
• “Only to teach men and not to teach women - is this not
ignoring the reciprocal relation between them?
According to the Rites, book learning begins at the age of
eight, and at the age of fifteen, one goes off to school.
Why, however, should this principle not apply to girls as
well as boys?”
o Arguing for women’s education not for
empowerment, but rather to do their duties better
• “As yin and yang are not of the same nature so man and
woman differ in behavior. The virtue of yang is firmness;
yin is manifested in yielding. Man is honored for
strength; a woman is beautiful on account of her
gentleness”
o Women in the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279)
▪ More texts surviving, more women writing and providing their
input on their lives (not that their lives got better but we know
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