Economic Status Of Women In The Ming And Qing Dynasties Merchants' Family Study

Content: The research of women in Qing & Ming dynasty Hui businessmen families has been for a long time, but its attention mainly focused on women's contribution, women's rights, women's social status etc.. and seldom paid attention to the family's economic status. This paper attempts to study the family's economic status of Qing & Ming dynasty Hui businessmen family's female from the entire development history of Hui businessmen and the whole development history of humanities.Using the method that is from outside to inside to study their inevitability and contingency of inequality in family's obligations and rights by analyzing some external factors such as nature, society and family environment in which Hui businessmen family's female had lived. Then the internal reasons of convergence choosing of action in related to the whole society at that time and the small local living environment were analyzed. According to the Engels and Morgan historical inference that the right losing of women and the studying results that how the inheritance of property shift to patrilineal from matrilineal, it can give a objective awarenessthe of women's group unfortunately and fortunately during the dominant male chauvinism. As the same time, a clear cognitive of the man and women rights changes is benefit to predict reasonable the tendency of man and women right and obligations.The paper is divided into six parts.Fist, the preface. This paper introduces the purpose and significance of topics, and introduces the domestic and foreign present research situation of Hui zhou female from two aspects that were Women's History Research and Wei Study. This paper attempts to take advantage of the Women's History Research and Wei Study to study Hui zhou female because of the restrictions between the two subjects which can't combine. The end of this part introduces some related theories which has been used.The second part introduces the living environment of Ming and Qing Dynasties Hui businessmen family female. The study of nature environment that was too many people but too less land, and society environment that was almost all people were businessman which had powerful clan, and the family environment that was the husbands were out almost whole years but the wives had to manage the home etc. provide basic background information for the study of their economic.The third part of the paper demonstrated the great contributions of women to the Hui businessmen families economic development in different periods such as the contributions that provided seed capital in the period of capital accumulation, managed the home affairs in the period of economic development and had to play the part for survival and descent in the period of their husband had been dead, according to the clues of Hui businessmen families economic development and the basement of variety historical books and literatures.The fourth part of the paper demonstrated the inequality between men and women both in the material and spiritual aspects, pointed out that the serious imbalance of female in the family obligations and rights, and stressed the great sacrifices of female in the family development by analyzing the family life rights and their mental state of women in the Hui businessmen families.The fifth part of the paper explained the reasons of the group convergence choosing of action from some aspects such as society and economic, cultural background and family, family relations in Ming and Qing Dynasties. And deeply analyzed the reasons of the Ming and Qing Dynasties Hui businessmen families female group convergence choosing of action in the particular period and particular groups according to the Engels and Morgan studies of the role conversion of men and women in family obligations and rights.The final part of the paper is the conclusion. This part summarized the reasons of Ming and Qing Dynasties Hui businessmen families female group convergence choosing of action, pointed out that there were two aspects factors. The external reasons were the social environment and exceptional Hui businessmen families environment, and the internal reasons were the history of mankind in the inevitable process of development stage.