Confucian philosophy preached women's inferiority to men. Women were to remain ignorant and to obey--first, their fathers; after marriage, their husbands; during widowhood, their sons. Marriages were arranged, and a woman's responsibility was to remain married, no matter how undesirable the match. Divorce was not allowed or remarriage by widows. The major role of women, considered the private property of men, was to please their husbands and to bear children. With the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the family status of rural women in China changed dramatically. The Chinese Communist Party and the people's government recognized that the liberation of rural women, who constituted half the population of China, was necessary for the country to realize complete emancipation.
The new government promulgated a series of laws, policies, and regulations that protected women. The Chinese Constitution of the early 1950s stated clearly that Chinese rural women enjoyed equal rights with men in political, economic, social, cultural, and family life. The state protected rural women's rights and interests, practiced equal pay for equal work, and provided equal opportunity for women's training and promotion. China's Marriage Law eliminated arranged marriages, stipulating that both women and men were free to choose their marriage partners, and widows were allowed to remarry. The Inheritance Law recognized the equal right of women to inherit family property. The Land Reform Law of the early 1950s provided rural women with an equal share of land under their own name, thereby protecting their economic independence.
. With the enlightening of Feminist discourse, I analyze the sexual division of labor in the china¡¦s women ethnic group, and find china¡¦s women to be both oppressed by patriarchy and capitalism in their family lives and their working environment as the Socialist Feminists has found in their earlier research. As a china¡¦s woman, no matter she be a daughter, be a wife, or be a mother, she has to carry more unequal responsibility under the traditional gender norm. They have no choice but do all the caring works, such as bearing children, doing housework, which were thought to be women¡¦s obligation. China¡¦s women also an important part of the labor force in the farm. Yet, china¡¦s women have been cheap labor because of their low education, few choices of jobs, and their heavy load of housework. Although the economic structure of china has changed, the life experiences of china¡¦s women keep influenced by their traditional ethnic/gender norm. In sum, the research tries to make the points on the china women¡¦s labor and virtues, and attempts to understand how the patriarchal ideology and structure works on the china women
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0714103-103242 |
| Date | 14 July 2003 |
| Creators | Tsay, Huey-Jen |
| Contributors | none, none, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0714103-103242 |
| Rights | restricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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