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WOMEN’S WORK AND RITUAL SPACE IN CHINA 177
fieldwork, is being increasingly ‘feminized’; that is, defined as ‘inner work’. The complexity
of constantly shifting gender boundaries here is a symptom of the conceptual confusion
that arose when ‘inner’ work lost its symbolic value and its association with female
governance and ritual power.
In some parts of rural China, however, women have been able to recuperate ritual power
in new and surprising ways. In Dazuo village, women do the heaviest and dirtiest work,
the kind performed by men elsewhere, but nonetheless exert considerable ritual power
within their own sphere, which is constructed as both the family and the local
community. In the case of Jiayuan village, wives of the local elites engage in ritual
activities once monopolized by men. In this case, the elite males found it politic to let
their wives handle religious issues that enhance family prestige, thus opening up a ritual space
for their wives. In Dazuo women’s ritual culture has extended its scope beyond the
traditional one of the household to the wider village community. These cases illustrate
how the reform period is offering many new opportunities for women, but as many of the
chapters in this volume demonstrate, with each new opportunity, a new gendered
boundary is also likely to emerge.

Notes

1 As Bray notes, there are three different characters used to represent the word ‘work gong’ as
it applies to work performed by women. In one case the character gong refers to any kind of
work, male or female; in another case the character for gong refers to meritorious work,
often work performed by women to meet household tax requirements. A third character
gong referred to women’s work in textiles (1997:184).
2 For notions of the separation of the sexes in ancient texts, see Raphals (1998: 195–213).
Raphals prefers to speak of ‘distinctions’ between the sexes based on differences of function
rather than strict physical separation (1998:212–13). She also argues that formulations of
inner and outer work in antiquity did not prevent women from engaging in a wide array of
activities outside the home (see esp. 1998:232–3). Studies of women in the later imperial
period show that in practice the necessary ‘distinction’ between the sexes was applied quite
flexibly. For the Song period, see Ebrey (1993) and the Qing Ko (1994).
3 For example, in the Book of Rites, the home is the sphere of women: ‘men must not speak of
internal [i.e. household] affairs’ (cited in Raphals 1998:232). The importance of women’s
domestic governance is signalled most strikingly in classic marriage rituals (Mann 1991:
208–10).
4 The actual situation was a lot more complicated than this canonical proverb would suggest,
see Gates (1997:123).
5 Bray’s thesis may hold most true for the silk industry. However, in the cotton industry
women were heavily engaged in the production of cotton for sale and tax purposes; see
review of Bray by Elvin (1998).
6 There were exceptions to this general picture, particularly amongst Hakka women in south
China; see discussion in Gilmartin (1994:197–8).
7 This was true even for the very early period of the revolution (Gilmartin 1994: 219–25).
For a critique of patriarchy under Chinese socialism, see Stacey (1983). See also Edwards, this
volume.