China’s Song dynasty was one of the heirs of the classical Han dynasty in East Asia. The Song dynasty was similar in size, complexity, and wealth to the Byzantine Empire. But there were plenty of differences, too.

The Song dynasty was an era of growth and expanding wealth. Farmers produced an enormous amount of food, which allowed the population to increase greatly. Both domestic and foreign trade increased as a result. New methods of producing iron, paper, and gunpowder, as well as a monopoly on silk production, made city-based merchant classes a lot more significant than they had been. The Song dynasty years were mostly peaceful. In the thirteenth century, however, the Mongols invaded China and toppled the Song. With that, the dynasty came to an end.

The Song dynasty was largely an era of peace and wealth. We’ll look at how a Confucian belief system and government laws jointly shaped Song women’s lives.

Belief systems

Chinese ideas about the differences between men and women go back even further than Confucianism. The ancient concepts of Yin and Yang are found in the I Ching, or “Book of Changes,” which was written around 800 BCE. Yin and Yang are two forces at work in the universe. Yin is associated with the female, and is seen as casting shade, cold and inactive. It is symbolized by the moon. Meanwhile, Yang is the male force. It is seen as warm, strong and active, and is symbolized by the sun.

About three centuries after the I Ching was written, the early Confucianists took up the idea that men and women had specific roles and behaviors, and also asserted that women were always lesser than men. Confucianism honored women as mothers and mothers-in-law within their families. Still, it was clear that a woman’s place was in the man’s household. She obeyed her father until it was time to obey her husband.

Confucianism is not really a religion because it doesn’t have temples or ceremonies. Buddhism, however, had temples and ceremonies in which Song women could participate. There were also Buddhist convents—houses set aside for women who wanted to pursue a life of religious learning and work. Women who devoted their lives to Buddhism were called nuns. (The men who did the same were called monks and lived in monasteries.) Religious Buddhist women could join a convent and live among other women who were studying Buddhism. Families could also send their daughters to a convent to avoid having to pay a high dowry to a potential husband’s family. Convents became the only places a woman could lead a life outside of marriage and having children. Unmarried women were given respectable social status, education, and control over their lives.

Social structures

As in European cultures around the same time, a woman’s social status was linked to her father or her husband. Unlike European women, Chinese women in the Song dynasty could inherit part of their father’s estate when he died, especially if there was no brother or son. Elite women—such as members of the nobility and aristocrats—lived on big rural estates and had some access to education, through private tutors. Their principal jobs were to run a household of servants and family members and to have children, preferably sons. Daughters of Confucian scholar bureaucrats were also considered upper class. They were often literate and taught their own children.

One problem these elite women could face was that their husbands could legally bring home a concubine, or qie. This concubine was basically a second wife. Proper noble women were expected to treat their husband’s concubine and their children politely. Concubines were expected to give birth to children, but their status was lower than that of a wife. They were treated like a household maid.

Some upper-class families forced their daughters to go through foot binding. This was a years-long process of tightly binding a girl’s feet to keep them small, which also crippled the feet. The idea was that this would ensure a better marriage, which in turn would help the family. Having a foot-bound wife was considered desirable. Because a foot-bound woman could not work in a store or a field and often needed the help of servants to walk, her husband could brag, “I’m so rich my wife doesn’t have to walk.” Foot binding was associated with new ideas emerging in the Song dynasty known as Neo-Confucianism. This thinking re-emphasized that everyone had to protect the reputation of their family. Non-Chinese ethnic groups did not foot-bind their daughters, nor did any family who knew their daughter would need to do physical labor.

Historians know more about elite women than we know about peasant women. Peasant families were farmers and made up the majority of the population (80%), as was true in most places in the world. Peasant women’s stories went largely undocumented at the time. Few peasants were literate, so they didn’t write about themselves. We assume that like all other farming women in the world, peasant women worked alongside the men, and also were responsible for taking care of the house and children. Since standing and walking were part of the job, these women were not foot-bound.

Merchants in Song dynasty China were considered lower class. According to Confucianist principles, “doing business”—without actually producing anything useful—made you a cheater. Merchants simply bought stuff for one price and sold it for more. Under Confucianism, that’s cheating.

Nonetheless, businessmen, traders, and merchants thrived during the Song dynasty. There were many women whose families were involved in trade and businesses of all kinds. Along with helping with their fathers’ or husbands’ businesses, these women had other employment opportunities. They could be Buddhist nuns, midwives who delivered babies, innkeepers, or work in silk production. A father with a store would certainly bring his wife and daughters to work. All of this often required women to develop some kind of literacy, in order to be able to write receipts and bills. Women who worked in trade and business were also sometimes required to know foreign languages to deal with international merchants.