Women in Ancient and Medieval China and India

Elizabeth Milliken

3 Women in Ancient and Medieval China and India

Focus Questions

Describe the basic societal structure of early China, including some of the important religious and philisophical beliefs of the society.
What were women’s status and roles in early Chinese society?
Describe the basic societal structure of early India, including some of the important religious and philosophical beliefs of the society.
What were women’s status and roles in early India?
India’s belief system included some powerful female deities. Does this seem a contradiction to women’s actual status? If so, what explains this contradiction?
Did women’s status seem to change over time in these societies?
Name and discuss some significant women in Chinese and Indian history from this period.

Women and Families in Classical Society

By Eman M. Elshaikh and Rosie Friedland. Revised by Eman M. Elshaikh

The OER Project

During the early period of the Han Dynasty, women had legal rights, property, and inheritance, though the rise of Neo-Confucianism resulted in the curtailing of women’s rights.

Historians call the 1,200-year stretch between 600 BCE and 600 CE the “classical” period. During these years, many significant new belief systems emerged, which gave rise to new laws, practices, and customs. As a result, women’s lives greatly changed.

During the classical period, women had less power than men. However, women were not all the same. Depending onwhere they lived and what social class they belonged to, different women had different degrees of freedom and independence in their public and private lives.

Belief systems

Belief systems and religions might seem to exist simply in the world of ideas. However, they have considerable effects onpeople’s daily lives. Over time, concepts create rules and expectations for how people relate to one another. This is particularly true in the way women live in relation to men and to society in general.

For example, women in China had very different social roles under two different belief systems: Daoism and Confucianism. The written rules of Daoism gave women a greater ability to play an active role in religion and to make decisions about theirown lives. The written rules of Confucianism limited women’s power more severely. However, it is unclear whether women actually followed these rules in all cases. As with any religious or moral system, there was a difference between rules on paper and how people actually lived their lives.

Painted image of Ban Zhao The Chinese scholar Ban Zhao. By AKappa, public domain

Belief system

Views on women

Philosophies

Confucianism in Han China

Filial piety required that people respect their elders and ancestors, especially male ones. The ideal role for women was to take care of a large household.

Women typically didn’t have formal roles in Confucian life outside the home.

Both Confucianism and Daoism have the concept of yin and yang, or duality.

Women are seen as part of the yin: yielding, submissive, soft, etc.

Men are seen as part of the yang: aggressive, powerful, etc.

Daoism in Han China

Women were allowed to be priests and teachers in the Daoist tradition.

In the classical Daoist text, the Daodejing, feminine characteristics such as fertility, softness, and submission are seen as positive and respected features.

In Daoism, the female contribution as the yin is more respected than it is in Confucianism; it is seen as a part of nature.

Daoism suggests that a softer, more yielding attitude may eventually lead to more favorable results.

Table 1: Table comparing views on women and philosophies in Confucianism and Daoism in Han China

Summary of the table:

Confucian Philosophy and views on women: Both Confucianism and Daoism have the concept of yin and yang, or duality. Women are seen as part of the yin: yielding, submissive, soft, etc.Men are seen as part of the yang: aggressive, powerful, etc. Filial piety required that people respect their elders and ancestors, especially male ones. The ideal role for women was to take care of a large household.Women typically didn’t have formal roles in Confucian life outside the home.

Daoist Philosophy and views on women: In Daoism, the female contribution as the yin is more respected than it is in Confucianism; it is seen as a part of nature. Daoism suggests that a softer, more yielding attitude may eventually lead to more favorable results.Women were allowed to be priests and teachers in the Daoist tradition.In the classical Daoist text, the Daodejing, feminine characteristics such as fertility, softness, and submission are seen as positive and respected features.

Family and marriage

In many societies, women’s primary roles were motherhood and managing a household. However, there were significantdifferences in how women performed these roles. Many of these differences depended on the nature of kinship relationswithin a particular society. Kinship is a close bond or relationship between two or more people. It is based on familialrelationships, such as common ancestry, blood relation, and marriage.

We can compare different kinship relations within one society. In Han China, a woman’s power in a particular householddepended on how she related to the men in the family. Confucianism taught that a woman had three key duties. She must beobedient to her father before she is married, to her husband while she is married, and to her son, after her husband dies.At every stage of their lives, women had to depend on a male relative. However, they had different levels of powerdepending on their age and influence over male family members. Mothers of powerful older sons, for example, had fargreater control over household affairs than a younger son’s new bride.

Chinese thinkers of the Han dynasty considered the family to be the core unit of society. Men were formally the head ofthe family unit and had legal power over the women and children in the household. Imperial Rome was similar.Throughout the Roman Empire, the father of the family was legally responsible for the family unit.

In both societies, women had some legal power. For example, Roman women could own property and inherit after the deaths of their fathers. In Han China, some older women held property and managed businesses. Similarly, in ImperialRome women regularly bought and sold property.

While the two societies share these similarities, they were different in other significant ways. For example, while women in Han China were mostly limited to separate women’s spaces, Roman homes were not formally segregated. Roman women had more of a role in public life than Han Chinese women did. The lives of Han women were mostly limited to the home.Roman women often dined with men and visited public baths. Women in Han China were not permitted to do either of these things.

	Formal legal status	Economic power	Role in public life
Han China	Formally, women’s lives were controlled by male kin.	Some women had wills and managed businesses.	Women were mostly limited to private, segregated spaces.
Imperial Rome	Paterfamilias was in charge of the women and children.	Women could inherit and own property after a father’s death.	Women could go out to dinner and visit public baths; however, women often had to be accompanied by a male relative or guardian to do so.

Table 2: Table comparing the formal legal status, economic power, and roles in public life of women in Han China vs. Imperial Rome

Summary of the table:

Han China: Formally, women’s lives were controlled by male kin.Some women had wills and managed businesses. Women were mostly limited to private, segregated spaces.

Imperial Rome: Paterfamilias was in charge of the women and children.Women could inherit and own property after a father’s death.Women could go out to dinner and visit public baths; however, women often had to be accompanied by a male relative or guardian to do so

Class and social hierarchyIn both societies, the lives of wealthy and poor women were very different. In Han China, the ability to keep a large household with a lot of family members was highly valued. But this Confucian ideal was not possible for poorer families who could only feed a limited number of people. Men with less money often sold their daughters as servants. They kept only their more valuable male children at home.

In Imperial Rome, women of different classes were distinguished by clothing style. Wealthy women wore a long dress orstola, and a loose coat called a palla.

Prostitutes wore togas. If a woman from a wealthy family was found guilty of adultery, one of the punishments was to forceher to wear a toga. However, the manner

of dress was not the only thing that distinguished the different classes. Poorer women were given fewer rights than women ofa higher social rank.

Photo of statue of Livia Drusilla — Statue of Livia Drusilla, the wife of the Roman emperor Augustus, wearing a stola and palla.

Sources:

Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015.

“Daughter/Wife/Mother or Sage/Immortal/Bodhisattva? Women in the Teaching of Chinese Religions.” AsiaNetwork Exchange,

vol. XIV, no. 2 (Winter 2006). Retrieved from http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Writings/Women.htm Hinsch,Bret. “Women, Kinship, and Property as Seen in a Han Dynasty Will.” T’oung Pao Second Series, Vol. 84, Fasc. 1/3 (1998). Tignor, Robert et.al. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.

Image credits:

The Chinese scholar Ban Zhao. By AKappa, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banzhao.jpg#/media/File:Banzhao.jpg

Statue of Livia Drusilla, the wife of the Roman emperor Augustus, wearing a stola and palla. By Luis García, public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stola#/media/File:Livia_Drusila_-_Paestum

“Women and Families in Classical Society” by Eman M. Elshaikh and Rosie Friedland, OER Project is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Women in Ancient China

by Mark Cartwright, The World History Encyclopedia

Women in ancient China did not enjoy the status, either social or political, afforded to men. Women were subordinate to first their fathers, then their husbands, and finally, in the case of being left a widow, their sons in a system known as the “three followings” or sancong. Often physically ill-treated, socially segregated, and forced to compete for their husband’s affections with concubines, a woman’s place was an unenviable one. Still, despite the harsh realities of living in a male-dominated society and being forever under the weight of philosophical and religious norms which were created by men to work for men, some women did break through these barriers. The practical realities of daily life meant many women could and did circumvent conventions, and some rose to live extraordinary lives producing great literature, scholarship, and even ruling the Chinese empire itself.

Theories on Women

At least in theoretical terms, women’s contribution, indeed necessity, to society was recognised in the principle of yin and yang. Even here, though, the male (yang) with its associated qualities is the predominant and has associations subtly considered the superior to the female (ying): hard versus soft, forceful v. submissive, level v. curved, light v. dark, rich v. poor, and so on.

Unknown Artist (Public Domain)

In China everyone knew it was better to be born a male, and even female characters in traditional literature sometimes stated that they had been a man in a previous life but had reappeared as a woman in this one as a punishment for past deeds. Another common introduction to a female character in such stories was the line “unfortunately she was born a woman”. A male child would grow up to contribute financially to the family, perform rituals such as those in ancestor worship, and perpetuate the family name. In contrast, a woman could not earn money and one day would leave the family and join her husband’s. Consequently, many baby girls were abandoned shortly after birth. Those girls who did survive were given such names as Chastity, Pearl, Thrift, or the names of flowers and birds in the hope that the girl would live up to that name and receive attractive offers of marriage.

Bitter it is to have a woman’s shape!

It would be hard to name a thing more base.

If it’s a son born to the hearth and home

He comes to earth as if he’s heaven sent,

Heroic heart and will, like the Four Seas,

To face ten thousand leagues of wind and dust!

To breed a girl is something no one wants,

She’s not a treasure to her family.

(3rd century CE poem by Fu Hsuan, in Dawson, 272)

Women were expected to excel in four areas: fidelity, cautious speech, industriousness, and graceful manners. A woman’s virtue was a particularly valued attribute in Chinese society. Women deemed especially virtuous such as chaste widows were sometimes given the honour of a shrine, monument, or commemorative tablet after death or had their names published in honorific obituaries. This practice was especially popular following the work of the Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi in the 12th century CE.

Marriage

Marriages in ancient China were usually arranged by both sets of parents. Not love but economic and social considerations were upmost in everybody’s minds. There were even professional matchmakers to find suitable pairings who also considered astrology in guiding their selections. Neither did some parents wait until their children were of age as many marriages had been arranged when the couple were still young children or even babies. The typical marrying age was the early twenties for men and late teens for women, although child brides were not unknown despite the practice being forbidden by law. If a marriage had been arranged but the groom died close to the ceremony, the wedding might go ahead anyway and the bride joined her new family as a widow.

Liana Miate (CC BY-NC-SA)

The bride went to live with the groom in his house or that of his parents, keeping her family surname. Her transferal of abode became a great procession when she was carried on a red bridal chair and her feet never touched the ground between the homes in order to ward off evil spirits. On arrival she met her husband, often it was the couple’s first meeting. A marriage feast was held and the ancestral tablets were “informed” of the new arrival. The historian R. Dawson continues the story:

The marriage was not registered with the civil authority, nor did the bride’s family take any part in the ceremony or jollification, although the couple did go a few days later to pay a formal visit to the bride’s home. The rites of marriage symbolised the fact that the bride’s body, fertility, domestic service, and loyalty had been handed over by one family to another. They also provided an opportunity for the groom’s family to display its affluence and glory in its prestige in the community. The splendour of these occasions was a severe burden on a family’s resources…An additional expense was the gifts to the bride’s family, the betrothal presents, which were a thinly disguised price for the person of the daughter-in-law and a clear indication of her total subservience to her new family. (143)

That a wife was not much more than a physical piece of her husband’s property is further illustrated in the ancient practice of foot-binding. Girls from aged three upwards had their feet crushed in bindings for years in the belief that the resulting small feet would appeal to her future husband.

IN CHINESE LAW, A MAN COULD DIVORCE HIS WIFE BUT SHE HAD NO SUCH RIGHT EXCEPT IF THE HUSBAND PARTICULARLY MISTREATED HIS WIFE’S FAMILY.

In Chinese law, a man could divorce his wife but she had no such right except if the husband particularly mistreated his wife’s family. The accepted grounds for divorce were failure to bear a son, evidence of being unfaithful, lack of filial piety to the husband’s parents, theft, suffering a virulent or infectious disease, jealousy, and talking too much. Some of these seem quite superficial to modern eyes, but it should be remembered that in Chinese society divorce was a serious action with negative social repercussions for both parties. Further, a wife could not be divorced if she had no family to return to or if she had gone through the three-year mourning period for her husband’s dead parents. Consequently, in practice, divorce was not as common as these grounds might suggest.

Another social convention was that widows should not remarry. Many did anyway amongst the lower classes, but the idea that the Fates and astrological charts had ordained that a particular couple should live together in matrimony was a difficult hurdle to get over in the case of a second marriage. An even greater barrier was a financial one as a widow did not inherit the property of her dead husband and so she had nothing to offer a new husband in that department.

Family & Working Life

Marriage and children were the expected normal course for all adults, and only those men who could not afford a wife did not marry. During the Han Dynasty, for example, unmarried women brought a special tax on their family and women with babies were given a three-year exemption from tax and their husband a one-year exemption. Regarding the sex of children, sons were much more desired than daughters. As the old proverb went: “A boy is born facing in; a girl is born facing out”, meaning that eventually a girl would ultimately leave the family and pay homage to the ancestors of another family. Having a son, then, greatly helped the wife to become accepted in her adopted family.

Unknown Artist (Public Domain)

For upper-class women, their lives were perhaps more strictly controlled than at any other social level. Expected to remain within the inner chambers of the family home, they had only a very limited freedom of movement. Within the home, women did have significant responsibilities which included management of the household finances and the education of her children, but this did not mean they were the head of the family home.

Women of lower status, such as farmer’s wives, were expected to work in the fields – especially in regions where rice was cultivated. As many farmers did not own their own land but worked it as tenants, their wives were, on occasion, subject to abuse from landowners. Many women were forced into prostitution in times of drought or crop failure. Women worked in the home weaving silk and caring for the silkworms that produced it. Some were called upon, like men, to perform the labour service which acted as a form of taxation in many periods of ancient China, but this was only in exceptional circumstances. By the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) women had more freedom and were running inns and acting as midwives amongst other professions.

Concubines & Prostitutes

Although Chinese men usually had only one wife, they did openly make use of courtesans and invite concubines to live permanently in the family home. Prostitution was an open part of town and city life, with officials and merchants frequenting houses where prostitutes plied their trade for the purposes of corporate entertainment. Concubines, meanwhile, apart from the pleasures their charms might bring, often provided a family with the all-important male heir when the wife only produced daughters. They did not have the legal status of the wife as they were classed as servants and nor were the children of a concubine given equal status and inheritance rights as the children of the wife. The number of concubines in the household was only limited by the husband’s means. The wife must never show any jealousy to her husband’s concubines – it was, as we have seen, grounds for divorce, but also it was thought there was a particularly nasty corner of hell awaiting jealous wives.

Concubines usually came from the lower classes and entered the households of the wealthier families in society. A girl from a richer family would only have been given as a concubine to an even richer family or the royal palace. It was not uncommon, though, for a younger sister to accompany a bride and live in the marital home of her sibling as a concubine. This Eastern Han funeral stele for a concubine presents an interesting record of their duties:

When she entered the household,

She was diligent in care and ordered our familial Way,

Treating all our ancestors as lofty.

She sought good fortune without straying,

her conduct omitting or adding nothing.

Keeping herself frugal, she spun thread,

And planted profitable crops in the orchards and gardens.

She respected the legal wife and instructed the children,

Rejecting arrogance, never boasting of her kindnesses.

The three boys and two girls

Kept quiet within the women’s apartments.

She made the girls submissive to rituals,

While giving the boys power.

Her chastity exceeded that of ancient times,

and her guidance was not oppressive.

All our kin were harmonious and close,

Like leaves attached to the tree.

(Lewis, 170-171)

Unknown (Public Domain)

Famous Chinese Women

Despite being restricted by the men and the male-created social conventions of the time, there were cases of Chinese women (both real and fictional) who defied convention to become celebrated poets, artists, calligraphers, historians, and even rulers. Below are some details of two such women, one the paradigm of virtue, the other more ambiguous and controversial.

Ban Zhao (41 – c. 115 CE) was one of the most famous female writers and scholars in early China. She wrote commentaries on Confucian classics, and her most famous work remains her Nuje or “Instructions for Women” which expanded on the four virtues expected of women (speech, virtue, behaviour, and work) first outlined in the classic Liji ritual text. Although Zhao stressed that women should remain subservient to their husbands she did express a belief in the benefits of women educating themselves (to better help their husband’s work). The Nuje text was hugely influential, studied by countless generations of women and even recited to those unable to read.

Wu Zetian (aka Wu Zhao) lived from 623 or 625 to 705 CE. The concubine of Tang dynastyemperors Taizong (626-649 CE) and Gaozong (r. 649-683 CE), she was officially made empress by the latter in 655 CE. On the death of Gaozong, she reigned as regent for her son Zhongzong (684 CE) and his successor and elder brother Ruizong (r. 684-690 CE). In 690 CE Wu Zetian went one step further and took the throne by declaring herself emperor, set up her court at Luoyang and declared the beginning of a new dynasty, the Zhou. Her reign, at least in Chinese tradition (which gives yet another insight into attitudes to women), was one of despotic terror punctuated by family assassinations and beset by political intrigues. Nevertheless, her ruthless approach did lead to the expansion of the state bureaucracy, and she was a great patron of Buddhist art, seen notably at the Longmen caves. At the end of her reign, she was forced to reaccept the Tang dynasty line and select Zhongzong as her heir apparent.

Bibliography

“Women in Ancient China” by Mark Cartwright, The World History Encyclopedia is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Women in the Song Dynasty of China, 960-1279 CE

By Ane Lintvedt, OER Project

Women in the era of China’s Song dynasty had different opportunities and obstacles depending on status, belief systems, and existing traditions.

The size, complexity, and wealth of China’s Song dynasty had a lot in common with the Byzantine Empire, which you already know about. In fact, the Song was one of the heirs of the classical Han dynasty in East Asia, just as Western European medieval states were heirs of the classical Roman Empire. But with many thousands of miles between them, there were plenty of differences, too, as we’ll notice in this examination of women’s lives in Song China. During the Song dynasty, farmers produced an enormous amount of food, creating a population boom that stimulated domestic and foreign trade, including maritime trade. Innovative new techniques for 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. Looking at the whole 300 years, it was generally a time of peace and prosperity… until the Mongols took it down in the thirteenth century. It happens. We’ve seen mostly male rulers across several eras use religion to bolster their claims to political power. Now we’ll look at how this intersection of the Confucian belief system and government laws shaped women’s lives in China during the Song dynasty. Belief systemsChinese ideas about the differences between men and women go back even further than Confucianism. The ancient concepts of Yin and Yang, found in the I Ching (meaning “Book of Changes” and written around 800 BCE) discussed Yin as the female; negative, casting shade, cold, passive and symbolized by the moon. Meanwhile the Yang were men; positive, warm, strong, active and symbolized by the sun. About three centuries later, the early Confucianists picked up the idea that men and women had specific roles and behaviors, including the notion that women were always lesser than men in any relationship. Confucianism emphasized that women were to be honored 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. She cared for him, her children, and her husband’s family. If you were a mother-in-law, however, you did get to boss around your daughter-in-law, who lived in your house and was essentially your servant. Confucianism can be called a philosophy or a belief system, but it’s not really a religion because it doesn’t have temples or ceremonies. Buddhism, however, has temples and ceremonies in which Song women could participate, and there were also convents—houses for religious life, learning and work for women. Women who took a vow to Buddhism were called nuns. (The male equivalents were monks who 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. As in Christianity, convents became the only places a woman could lead a life that didn’t revolve around having children. She could have respectable social status as an unmarried woman, receive an education, live under female leadership, and control her own life in many ways. Social structuresAs in European cultures around the same time, women in China were legally the property of their nearest male relative, and women’s social status was linked to their father or their husband. Unlike European women, Chinese women in the Song dynasty were entitled to part of their father’s estate when he died, especially if there was no brother or son. Elite women—such as 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 many children, preferably sons. Daughters of Confucian scholar bureaucrats were also considered upper class. They were often literate and musical, and became teachers to their own small children.

Empress Gao seated on throne — Empress Gao. She served as Regent (temporary ruler) from 1085-1093, while her grandson was too young to inherit the throne. Public domain.

One problem these elite women could face was that their husband could legally bring home a concubine, who was basically a second wife. It could really complicate family life, since proper noble women were expected to treat their husband’s concubine and their children politely. Concubines, or qie, had an in-between role. They were like wives in that they were expected to bear children for their male partners, but they also had a lower status somewhat like household maids or domestic workers.Some upper class families subjected their daughters to foot binding, a years-long process of tightly binding a girl’s feet to keep them small, a process that also mutilated them. Confused? The idea was that this would ensure a better marriage—and family alliances—for the family. Still confused? Well it’s not like other cultures haven’t created similar tortures for women to meet a particular standard of beauty, but here’s the deal in Song China. A foot-bound woman could not work in a store or a field and often needed the help of servants to walk, so her husband could brag, “I’m so prosperous that my wife doesn’t have to walk.” Foot binding was not part of Confucianism, but its association with status and obedience lined up conveniently with new ideas emerging in the Song dynasty known as Neo-Confucianism. This newer thinking re-emphasized that everyone, including women, had to protect the good reputation of their family. And a foot-bound woman was certainly an example of a young elite woman following her families’ orders. Non-Chinese ethnic groups within the Song dynasty did not foot-bind their daughters, nor did any family who knew that their daughter would need to do physical labor of some sort.Historians know a lot more about elite women than we know about peasant women. Peasant families were farmers and made up the majority of the Song population (80%), as was true in most places in the world. These women’s stories went largely undocumented at the time. Few if any of these peasants were literate, so they didn’t write about themselves. Elite men who couldwrite already thought women were inferior, so they were not going to waste their time, paper and ink writing about poor rural farming women. Basically, 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 the children. Since standing and walking were part of the job, these women were not foot-bound.

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.One might expect merchants, who often made good money, to earn middle class status, but Confucian philosophy firmly considered them lower-class people. The logic here is that “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 prosperous Song dynasty. The economy was booming, so there were a lot of 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 midwives who delivered babies, Buddhist nuns, 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 some kind of literacy, either writing receipts or in figuring out bills, and perhaps knowing foreign languages to deal with 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.

Image credits

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

“Women in the Song Dynasty of China” by Ane Lintvedt, OER Project is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Women in Ancient and Medieval India

Development of complex cultures in the Indian Sub-Continent

Complex culture emerged in India during the Bronze Age (4000-1000 BCE) around the same time that other complex cultures were emerging in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The first complex urban culture, like these others, developed along a great river system: in this case, the Indus River.

In this river basin system, a remarkably highly developed society built numerous large cities with standardized-sized bricks, grid like street patterns, and sewage and water systems. Excavations have unearthed little evidence of social stratification; for instance, residential quarters appear to be fairly equal, and little evidence of kingship or warfare has been found in these sites. These findings may indicate that this “Harappan” (named after one of the major sites excavated) culture was relatively egalitarian and generally peaceful. Artwork depicting female figures indicates that female divinity was a prominent feature of this culture’s religious beliefs and that women may have enjoyed high status in this society.

https://www.harappa.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Sindh%20Watch%201%202004.pdf

Sometime around 2000 BCE these cities showed signs of stress, and by 1500 BCE or so many of these sites seem to have been abandoned, possibly under pressure from environmental change. Shortly thereafter, a migration of Indo-European pastoral nomadic people made their way into the sub-continent from the west/central Asian steppe. These migrants brought with them horses and chariots, bronze tools and weapons, and more patriarchal and warlike cultural norms, including a belief system centered on powerful male deities. The “synthesis” of this new cultural group with the pre-existing indigenous culture of India created the Vedic tradition.