TRADITIONAL VIEWS  OF WOMEN'S ROLES   Women in China still combat traditional stereotypes of women's roles in society and in the home. Traditionally, women's work centered around the home. Until the one child policy was enacted in , women were expected to bear many children, the more the better, especially if the children were male.   Women were also engaged in spinning, weaving and other home industries, as well as in manual labor.       Many of these activities continue today, as seen from this women who is working in a silk rug factory in Xian. She will labor for approximately two years to produce a small rug of about 3 feet by 2 feet, which will be sold for approximately $2,000. Her wages are approximately $30 per month.         Women were also expected to work in the fields, and many Chinese women still are engaed in manual labor, such as this woman who sweeps the grounds of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. A large percentage of Chinese women are peasants. The population of China is approximately 1.3 billion people. In Shaanxi province, 80% of the 34 million people are farmers. 2 million of these people live under poverty line; 50% of these people are women. The average income of a farmer in China is about $500 a year, and most Chinese peasants live in villages without running water, central air or heat, or schools. View the quicktime movie for a virtual tour of a peasant's village on the way from Beijing to the Great Wall.     A HAN COMMENTARY ON WOMEN Traditional attitudes toward women in China demanded that women be subservient and self-effacing. One of the most famous commentaries on the role of women in China was written in the first century C.E. by Pan Chao. Pan Chao became the only female to become an official historian to the Han court, and she was to complete her brother's famous history of the Han. Pan Chao was very well-educated, which was unique for the time. Although she insisted that women be as well-educated as men, she also taught the traditional values: which kept them subservient to men. she describes the customs which surround the birth of a girl: "On the third day after birth of a girl, the ancients observed three customs: first to place the baby below the bed, second to give her a potsherd with which to play, third to announce her birth to her ancestors by an offering. Now to lay the baby below the bed plainly indicated that she is lowly and weak, and should regard it as her primary duty to humble herself below others. To give her potsherds with which to play indubitably signified that she should practice labor and consider it her primary duty to be industrious. To announce her birth before her ancestors clearly meant that she ought to esteem as her primary duty the continuation of worship in the home."   A woman's position in society and in the home can be summed up by Pan Cho's injunction to: "Let a woman modestly yield to others. Let her respect others. Let her put others first, herself last. Should she do something good, let her not mention it. should she do something bad, let her not deny it. Let her bear disgrace; let her even endure when others speak or do evil to her. Always let her seem to tremble and fear." She further instructed woment that once a married woman has accepted the principle that men are superior to women, and the old to the young, she will adjust to the married life. She reminded women that : "If a wife does not serve her husband, then the proper relationship between man and woman is broken" and that "To win the love of one man is the crown of a woman's life; to lose the love of one man is her eternal disgrace." (Quotations taken from Pan Chao, Lessons for Women, in Classics of Eastern Thought, ed. Lynn H. Nelson and Patrick Peebles (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 101-112. During my visits with modern Chinese women, I was told that for many young women today, a good husband is still preferable to a good job. FOOTBINDING Such attitudes toward women led to practices such as footbinding, which reached its highpoint in Ming period (14th-17th centuries), but continued even in the twentieth century. Footbinding was an excrutiatingly painful process, in which the arch of the foot was broken, and the feet bound to keep them from growing. The feet had to be kept continuously bound; otherwise, they would being to heal. Bound feet often became infected and gangrenous; women with bound feet could not walk, as they could not support or balance their weight. As the custom grew, even peasant women had their feet bound, and worked in the fields on their hands and knees.   SWORN SISTERS: HUNAN PROVINCE Women in such circumstances developed solidarity and a communication network. In southeastern China in the Hunan province where Mao Tse Tung was born, women organized themselves into groups of seven women, which included young as well as elderly women. These groups were known as sworn sisters, and they became lifelong friends who developed a language and a writing system known only to themselves. Often, their communications contained revolutionary or dissenting statements, and they wove their statements into quilts or wrote them on fans.   Women in China are still engaged in many of these traditional activities today, and have developed stronger networks of solidarity through the many provincial and national federations of women whose task is to address the needs of women.   Explore Women Engaged in Traditional Acitivites in the 20th century  a virtual tour of a cloisonne factory Return to "Women Hold up Half the Sky" Return to Global Issues Home Page Created by Dr. Deborah Vess, copyright 1998. All rights reserved.