Pre - Qin Women's Studies

In this brief paper, I will attempt to fill the apparent void in methodical treatments by lookin,I will consider plural language only insofar as it sheds direct light on singular and collective usage.Women constitute a distinct social group, and the character of that group, long neglected by historians, has nothing to do with feminine "nature." "Gender" is the term now widely used to refer to those ways in which a culture reformulates what begins as a fact of nature. The biological sexes are redefined, represented, valued, and channeled into different roles in various culturally dependent ways.We begin our introduction to this book by providing a brief account of the development of gender studies, before going on to make some general remarks about the key concepts themselves and how readers might make best use of them.This paper addresses that question via a philological (inductive) approach, taking the biblical corpus as a whole and distilling the rules of its linguistic system according.Women/social gender studies has a relatively short history which originated in 1980s from the West and spread to China thereafter. Its emergence can be traced back to the Western Postmodernism Philosophy. At present, very few historians in China approaches women studies from the perspective of social genders. Women/social gender studies in China till now is still rather sporadic and fledgling . Prof. Du Fangqin brought the theory of social gender into the research of the woman's history of Pre-Qin which provides new perspectives. This paper employes methodology initiated by Prof. Du in its examination of the woman history of Pre-Qin era.This paper attempts to shed lights on the women's history, construction of social gender system before Qin Dynasty, as well as the gender norms in the Pre-Qin culture. The paper consists of five chapters as below:Chapter one is forword. The author discusses the significance of and academic value of the topic. It moves on to provide an overview of the background and history of the woman/social gender studies, status quo and existing theories. Besides, the author also explains the basic concepts involved in this paper and the structure.In chapter two deals with the social gender norms of Hua Xia era, evolution of Hua Xia's gender system and the woman's living condition in Xia, Shang Dynasty.On the basis of the archaeological data, ancient tales and the references, we can find that in the matrilineal society, social life and production is centred around women. Matrilineal social norms dominate gender system.Most of the archaeologists believe that the patriarchy was not adopted until the metaphase and anaphase of Da Wen Kou culture in the middle and lower reaches of Yellow River. The relation between the two genders began to transform into a male dominated gender system in which man is the center of the society while woman taking on a more submissive role.According to many tales about Xia Dynasty, we can conjecture the genderstructure of that time--patriarchy is the dominant norm and matrilineal culturestill wields the great influence. Both of them intertwines and coexists which can be displayed from the tale story of "Shao Kang Zhong Xing" and "Duo Quan Yin Shi" of Xia.Shang Dynasty is a highly developed patrilineal society, because it has complete relatives system and the role of father, mother and child is clearly identified. People maintain the practice of marriage and worshipping for forefathers, besides, the kingship was succeeded by son or brother. So we can find that the system of patrilineal tradition succeeding, sacrificial offering, marriage and relatives has been established. Women who lived in Shang dynasty still played important roles in the social lives. They joined the public affairs frequently. Many noble women were respected in both public and private settings. All of these proved that in the highly developed patrilineal society of Shang, the relique of matrilineal clan still existed.The author conjecture that the end of Shang was the beginning of Di Shu system and it was also the important period of the brew, accumulation and germination of the clan system.In the third chapter, the author studies women's historical situation under the social gender system based on the patriarchy. The establishment and maturity of Zhou's clan system and Zhou's etiquette (Zhou Li) are the symbols of completely setting up of the patriarchy social gender system. Clan system not only belonged to the nobles in Xi Zhou and Chun Qiu, but also be combined with regime organizations. It instituted the organizational connections of both nobles and politics. At meanwhile, it ordained the relatives among male Shaikhs of different ranks and their political rights. The six contents included in the clan system all had the characters that excluded women. For example, in the clan sacrifice system, people mainly do the sacrifice offering for the male ancestors; clan tomb system was enclosed the centre of male leaders; the name system showed that the character ofpatriarchy society--people used family name to distinguish the marriage andused surname to distinguish gentle and simple; getting marry with women from other clan and the marriage in the inside of the clan ensured the benefits of native men, and at the same time, they could also make other clans become the relatives-in-low; the trueborn first son succeed the regality could guarantee agnation succeeding; directing by Shaikh limited the absolute standard of the male leaders.The patriarchy social gender system is based on the regulation of Zhou --Zhou Li was the basic gist and main code which kept Zhou's social system, institutional system and division of labour of the two genders work efficiently. The composing of patriarchy in Zhou can be explained surround "Zhou Li". The basic gist of Zhou Li can be supplemented and generalized as four principles according to the research ofWang Guowei--respect the elders, maintain family rituals, give prominence tothe wise and distinguish the men and women--eldest son succession, system of clan sacrifice, system of marriage and system of labour division between man and woman . These four principles and four systems were combined together.As the patriarchy social gender system matured, women dropped out from the public field step by step until they lose the rights of speaking out themselves totally. This point could be proved from the clan system, regularly of Zhou Li, women's position in the sacrifice actions, marriage situation, the system of livery and the etiquettes. Man in Zhou became the heroically main role gradually, while woman became the inferior and silent witness. Chapter four discusses the social gender concept in Pre-Qin era. Patriarchy social gender system and the spreading of the ideas were mainly depended on the moralizing of the Confucian Culture and changing existing habits and customs. For example, the Qin Kun Ding Wei of settled the philosophical base; " women keep away from the official businesses" made the natural labour division of the two genders become the social one and through this, men achieved the purpose that excluding women from the public fields. Furthermore, the taste tropism, especially, the aesthetic thoughts had the latent effects on building woman's role. Dao Culture didn't discriminate against women, however it didn't become the mainstream at last (at most, it alleviated the worriment about their own gender role, but it could not change women's fortune fundamentally in Pre-Qin ) .The fifth chapter is the conclusion. The author sums up the key points of the paper and summarizes the highlights of the whole paper. Moreover, the author supplements more explanation which is aimed to allow readers to better understand the purpose of the paper.