Women in the Song Dynasty of China, 960-1279 CE
China’s Song dynasty was one of the heirs of the Han dynasty in East Asia. The Song dynasty was similar to the Byzantine Empire in terms of size and wealth. But there were plenty of differences, too.
The Song dynasty was a time of population growth and expanding wealth. Farmers produced an enormous amount of food, which allowed the population to increase greatly. Trade within China and with other countries increased greatly as well, and city-based merchants became 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 rulers. With that, the dynasty came to an end.
The Song dynasty was largely a time of peace and opportunity. 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 linked 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. They also claimed 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 take part. There were also Buddhist convents, or 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.) 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 getting married and having children. They allowed a woman to receive an education and to live under female leadership. Nuns were able to control their own life in many ways. They were also respected by the community.
Social structures
As in European cultures around the same time, women in China were legally the property of their nearest male relative. Their social status, or position in society, was linked to their father or their husband. Unlike European women, Chinese women in the Song dynasty could inherit part of their father’s estate when he died.
Noble and aristocratic women lived on big rural estates. They had some access to education, through private tutors. Their principal jobs were to run a household of servants and family members, and to have many children. Daughters of Confucian scholar officials were also considered upper class and could often read.
One problem upper-class women could face was the fact that their husband could legally bring home a concubine, or qie. This concubine was basically a second wife. 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. The process would end up crippling the girl’s feet. Chinese families believed this would ensure a better marriage, which would help the family. Having a foot-bound wife was considered a sign of high social status. 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.” 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 a lot more about upper-class women than peasant women. Peasant families were farmers. They made up 80 percent of the population. 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, even though many grew very rich. According to Confucianist principles, “doing business” made you a cheater. Instead of producing anything, merchants simply bought stuff for one price and sold it for more. In 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 made it necessary for these women to develop some kind of literacy to write receipts and bills. In trade, women also needed to know foreign languages for international merchants.
Sources
Blake, C. Fred. “Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucianism China and the Appropriation of Female Labor.” Signs 19, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 676-712.
Ebrey, Patricia, et al. East Asia: A Cultural , Social, and Political History. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2009.
Ebrey, Patricia. “Engendering Song History.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 24 (1994): 340-346.
Gao, Xiongy. “Women Existing for Men: Confucianism and Social Injustice against Women in China.” Race, Gender & Class 10, no. 3 (2003): 114-125.
Hsieh, Ding-hwa. “Buddhist Nuns in Sung China.” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 30 (2000): 63-96.
Tao, Chia-lin Pao and Jing-Shen Tao. “Elite Women in the Eleventh-Century China.” The Historian 56, no 1 (Autumn 1993): 29-40.
Wang, Shuo. “New Social History in China: The Development of Women’s History.” The History Teacher 39, no. 3 (2006): 315-323.
Ane Lintvedt
Ane Lintvedt is a teacher at McDonogh School in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. She has an MA in History from The Johns Hopkins University, and has been integrally involved in the development, writing, scoring and teaching of AP World History for 20 years. She has written both student and teacher guides, as well as given papers at major historical conferences. She was awarded the Pioneer in World History Award by the World History Association in 2013.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cover: Plaster model of left foot deformed by foot binding, Wellcome, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plaster_model_of_left_foot_deformed_by_foot-binding_Wellcome_L0064889.jpg
Empress Gao served as Regent (temporary ruler) from 1085-1093 CE, while her grandson was too young to inherit the throne. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Gao_(Song_dynasty)#/media/File:宣仁聖烈皇后.jpg
A small-scale merchant selling to a woman in a village, surrounded by children. This is one of the few images of everyday women in the Song Dynasty that we have access to. Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Li_Sung_001.jpg
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