Study On The Role Transition Of The Embroideresses From The Miao Nationality In The Leishan County

The Leishan County is one of the main settlements of the Miao Nationality in Guizhou. The Miao Nationality was incorporated into the rule of the central government very late. Before the reign of Emperor Yongzheng in Qing Dynasty, the Miao Nationality had been in autonomy, so that the traditional culture of the Miao Nationality has been reserved very well. The embroidery, as a typical traditional culture of the Miao Nationality, has been reserved and passed down through the hands of the embroideresses in generations and become a necessary skill for the local women. Through the socialization process of the human beings, culture can construct and shape the gender role of human beings. Under the traditional culture, the Miao Nationality has developed its special gender division of labor, namely “the men do the farm work while the women do weaving”. Therefore, the embroideresses undertook the responsibility of embroidering clothes for the family. However, with the social and economic development, the self-awareness of the embroideresses was weakened.Besides, the changes of national policies further promoted the transition of the gender division of labor from the mode of “the men do the farm work while the women do weaving” in the traditional society and the mode of “the men and the women do farm work together” in the collective production period to the mode of “the women do farm work and the men do engineering work” in the reform and opening up period of China.Finally, under the action of the market economy, the embroideresses got rid of the farmland and began to seek for self-development in the counties by virtue of their embroidery skills. Such transition of the gender division of labor inevitably brought about the role transition of the embroideresses. Based on the field investigation in Leishan County, the theories of ethnology, social genders, Marxist feminism and human development were used to analyze the influence of the changes in eachhistorical stage on the role transition of the embroideresses. The role transition process of local embroideresses from embroideresses to women farmers and businesswomen, the causes of the transition and its influence on the development of local embroideresses were revealed in this paper.