Women and their roles throughout history seem to be a topic that has continually grabbed my attention. I find it fascinating that there seems to be this constant back and forth of the progress and lack thereof that women experience throughout history.

During the Song Dynasty, although it’s commonly marked as a “golden age” for China, it was much less than that for women. Confucianism played a big role in a woman’s place being less than that of a man’s. “The Song Dynasty historian and scholar Sima Guang (1019-1086) summed up the prevailing view: ‘The boy leads the girl, the girl follows the boy; the duty of husbands to be resolute and wives to be docile begins with this” (246). First of all, let me just say “ahhhh!!!” I could have never lived during this time. If someone so much as mentions the word docile to me, insinuating or telling me that my behavior needs to be this way, it usually ends in some choice words on my part.

“Women were also frequently viewed as a distraction to men’s pursuit of a contemplative and introspective life. The remarriage of widows, though legally permissible, was increasingly condemned, for ‘to walk through two courtyards is a source of shame for a woman’.” (246). I find this part especially interesting. As history goes on we see women (widows) being pushed to do the opposite but for virtually the same reasons. If a woman was widowed (at later parts in history), we often saw her being pushed in the direction of remarriage because she was not seen as capable of taking care of herself. In the time period of the Song Dynasty as well as later time periods, women are both viewed as delicate creatures, ones who may not have the capability of thinking for herself, taking care of herself or making a life without a man heavily involved.

This view of delicacy was a main thread throughout a women’s role during the Song and Tang Dynasty’s. “The most compelling expressions of a tightening patriarchy lay in foot binding. Beginning apparently among dancers and courtesans in the tenth or eleventh century C.E., this practice involved the tight wrapping of young girls’ feet, usually breaking the bones of the foot and causing intense pain. During the Tang Dynasty, foot binding spread widely among elite families and later became even more widespread in Chinese society. It was associated with new images of female beauty and eroticism that emphasized small size, delicacy, and reticence, all of which were necessarily produced by food binding” (247).  This foot binding seemed to go hand-in-hand with the Confucianism tradition, forcing women to stay off their feet, in their house and subservient to men.

As if feet-binding wasn’t already painful enough, “The growing prosperity of elite families funneled increasing numbers of women into roles as concubines, entertainers, courtesans and prostitutes. Their ready availability surely reduced the ability of wives to negotiate as equals with their husbands. It set women against one another ad created endless household jealousies” (247).  

An era I am certainly glad I did not live in, filled with inequalities between the sexes and classes. One could argue these inequalities still go on today (of course, not to this extent)…and sure, I may agree but I definitely don’t see any foot binding going on. I’ll take 2013 in the Bay Area over anything else any day.