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Women’s work and ritual space in China
Anne E.McLaren

One of the central themes of this book is the question of what constitutes ‘women’s
work’ in contemporary China and how notions of ‘women’s work’ have shifted in the course
of the twentieth century. This issue is also one of the most contentious in the field of
Chinese gender studies (Mann 1997, 2000; Bray 1997; Jacka 1997; Entwisle and
Henderson 2000). Since antiquity, the Chinese have recorded notions of ‘outer’ work
(perceived as male) and ‘inner’ work (perceived as female). Historians and sociologists
have demonstrated the constructed and temporal nature of these notions of inner and
outer. In this chapter I seek to continue the debate by enriching notions of ‘women’s
work’, usually considered narrowly as the production of goods and services, to include
the function of women’s ritual culture and domestic space in community perceptions of
female labour. In particular, I will discuss the issue of women’s agency and empowerment
in their ‘traditional’ work sphere. Finally, I will pose questions about not only what
women gained in the tortuous process of revolution and modernization, but also what
they may have lost.
The general narrative about the gendered division of work in Chinese history begins
with classical formulations of ‘women’s work’ or ‘womanly work’ (nügong) and notions of
1
the separation of the sexes. In early China, women’s work was regarded as of
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complementary status to that of men. The Confucian notion that ruling a state began
with ruling one’s home lent dignity to notions of household governance and female
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management in the domestic sphere. For early and medieval China, notions of what was
appropriate work for women focused on spinning, weaving and sewing. ‘Men till the fields
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and women weave’ was the traditional formulation (Bray 1997:180; Mann 2000:19). In
this way men and women were seen to play commensurate and indispensable roles in
maintaining family fortunes.
The perceived importance of ‘women’s work’ may have declined in some regions as
textile production became commodified from the Song (960–1279) period onwards.
According to Francesca Bray, men came to dominate the commercial production of
textiles by the seventeenth century. Now that women no longer produced cloth for sale
on the market or to meet government taxation requirements, their social status declined
5
accordingly (1997:175ff). Bray points out the unfairness of this perception. Women still
continued to be heavily involved in providing cocoons and silk thread but, she argues, ‘[I]n
China whoever sat at the loom was considered the real maker of the cloth’ (1997:257). By
the late nineteenth century, the domestic space in which women lived and performed