留学生课程essay作业：论中国家庭和妇女的社会角色

通过时代的研究，性关系得到了许多学科的研究。人类文明发展的历史，在一定意义上是两性关系的进化史。劳动是人类文明发展的动力，不仅创造了人，而且改造了人。人与动物之间的区别是工作，而人与人之间的区别是社会分工。社会分工给每个人一个不同的社会地位，分配一个不同的社会空间，在不同的社会责任和发挥着不同的社会作用。作为人民的一部分，妇女不可避免地受到社会分工的影响。在不同的历史阶段，不同的社会分工决定了女性在社会生活中的地位，并对一些延伸决定了女性在社会空间特征及其兴衰中的作用。Through the ages, sexual relations have been the research of many disciplines. A history of human civilization development, in some sense is the evolutionary history of relations between the sexes. Labor is the motive force of human civilization development, which not only created man but also transform the people. What makes a distinction between people and animals is work, and that make a distinction between person and person is the social division of labor of labor. Social division of labor gives each person a different social status, allocates a different social space, be under different social responsibility and plays a different social role. As part of the people, without exception, women were influenced by social division of labor inevitably. In different stages of history, different social division of labor determines the status of women in social life, and to some extends determines the role of women in the social space characteristics and their rise and decline.
 

In early human development, namely the matriarchal period, there was no obvious differentiation between women and men in the production of livelihood and, and the only difference was the division of different nature. Due to the strong physique, men went fishing and hunting, be against the beast with great blindness and chance. And for the reason that the tools were extremely crude it lead to a bad situation that the harvest was very limited; Due to weaker physique and flexible fingers, women did some word like gathering fruit and making clothing, which were stable and had a relatively good harvest and then became the main source of clan members life. Women found the rule of the growth of plants in long-term engaged in the acquisition of labor, and began regular collection and to plant in small area, thus invented the primitive agriculture, which enabled them become the main agricultural labor. Survival needs led to women's important status. In old China, the status of women caring inside household, men dominating outside of household had never changed. For women, they bare the high pressure under working environment and the responsible for breeding babies. ”In fact, 90 per cent of workers sent home were women with small children. For the women involved, the loss of income caused serious material difficulties”(Tamara Jacka,1990,p3).#p#分页标题#e#
 

The 20th century was a period when Chinese society broke out earth-shaking changes. Women as part of the society, its social role and historical status changed with the national and democratic revolution and the process of reform and opening up. In traditional China, roles for granted, women had no independent economic status. They could not participate in political activities, and also not had the right to accept education. What they accept was the requirement to meet the "women's education" in patriarchal society. ”The Marriage Laws of 1950 and 1980 started a conceptualization of women’s role as wives and mothers that centered on a redefinition of the husband –wife relationship ”(Harriet Evans,2002,p347). In the end, the entire contents of the role of women in the feudal society were: listen to her father when not be married, listen to her husband when be married and listen to her sons when her husband died. “Neo-Confucianism in Korea not only masculinized the public sphere through its gender ideology, but also established the family as the prototypical metaphor of social relations among individuals and groups. However, this masculinized public sphere did not mean that women in Korea were associated with the private sphere”(Seungsook Moon,2002,p478).Until the late Qing dynasty, Western culture were introduced into China, the bourgeois reformists launched the movement of not foot-binding. By creating a female school, doing female paper and so on, it led the first wave of the women's liberation in modern society. The women's liberation movement had even affected the Qing government. And in 1902, the Qing government ordered a ban on women's foot-binding publicly. 

 In the Revolution of 1911, the most compelling change of the female characters was women’s pursuit of political role, which determined the theme of other changes of female characters. Advanced women who gets involved in the anti-imperialist and Qing revolutionary movement, spare no effort to fight for their rights, in order to exert self salvation and wisdom and realize the value of female personality. In the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary struggle, there exited the women revolution led by the bourgeois revolutionary struggle, and also a women's spontaneous revolution; There were upper middle-class intellectual women fight and struggled for the bottom of the women and women; There were also domestic women's unyielding struggle and overseas female students echo each other at a distance. The revolution, women's national salvation actions also embodied in their struggle against the Qing dynasty under the leadership of the bourgeois revolutionaries. In this period of role change of women, in addition to showing the female like male characteristic, also have the male characteristics. At that time, role change of women in general was also dependent on the male's promotion, advocacy, and organization. Intellectual women's group was just involved in the movement, and mostly played a role of change as the model of the effect.#p#分页标题#e#
 

The May fourth period of the new culture movement was majestic thought enlightenment. The problem of female characters changes became the focus of a cultural movement. Various schools of thought on women's role put forward the solution, and formed a complex theoretical system. The May fourth period was the found period of human and the discovery of women at the same time. When theory was highlighting the former, the latter are also involved at the same time. The found of Women did not only emphasize on that women and men was equal, and began to deal with the issue that women and men are not the same person. Women firstly realized that they were people can do anything too. The may fourth period of women not only found that women were equal with men and women, also gradually realized that women and men were not the same men, and make their efforts to get out of the circle. They realized that if woman wanted to have liberation, they should know consciously, and struggled to extract the independence of thought. Women began to refuse old-style marriage and asked for marriage freedom. In the traditional patriarchal society, women had no right to decide free marriage. Divorce was the privilege of men, and women's only obligation was "obedience". In the May 4 movement period, with the women's liberation day, resisting old-style marriage was one of the important contents of the women's liberation movement. It was against the feudal family culture and laws of academic criticism. The new culture movement advocated loudly proposed women "personality liberation" slogan. They thought women should not passively wait for negative social salvation, waiting for the liberation of the male, and should liberate themselves; Claims that women should be brave enough to shake off the yoke of the feudal family system, laws and ethics and walk out from the feudal culture barriers, for as a whole "person" is the basic rights, including women's independent personality, spiritual liberation. Coeducation is one of the important contents of the education of women in the may fourth period. Early in May 4th, the middle school and university of coeducation still belonged to the forbidden area. Luo Gulun claimed that in order to achieve liberation of Chinese women, it was a must to put men and women education together. Hu shi also agreed with coeducational school and college, and he believes that men and women in school has many advantages, such as because men than women's university disciplines of the university of complete kinds, thus can expand the scope of women's higher education; Can make the adult men and women have proper communication, develop self-discipline ability and life experience. The May fourth period, some scholars had noticed that in addition to education, women's liberation should also emphasize the importance of economic independence. If a man was not independent on the economy, she would not be separate naturally in spirit. And if women would like to get the equal status as men, they must first seek economic independence. Since the lack of economic independence was the important reason for the Chinese women enslaved and oppressed, then striving for economic independence had become a premise and way of women's liberation.#p#分页标题#e#
 

Since China's reform and opening up, role changes of Chinese women had achieved great improvement. Regardless of urban and rural areas, the simple family female characters had been fewer and fewer, and the vast majority of women were also on the dual role of family and community, although on a different weight. Both socialist system prior to the reform which gave women historic liberation and the reform and opening-up policy which brought historic opportunity do women a favor to get freedom. In addition to the role of living space to expand, the female also obtained special role survival quality. Both family role and social role, women's role had gradually improved, and the functions of roles were becoming more strengthened. This phenomenon is more obvious in Chinese rural areas than urbane area. Take the big city of Shanghai for example. Shanghai men are regarded as standard husband to Chinese women and there is a saying that “if one wants to marry a man, then marry Shanghai men”. There is reason for the praise of Shanghai men - they do the grocery and cook meals after work. In rural areas, family system is still dominant that men are the center of the family and women can only take care of household issues. “able to produce more. In the struggle to retain the loyalty of the rural male population just after Liberation, the state made a series of compromises with family- reform efforts, expecting to return to the issues when more groundwork had been laid. Rather than insisting that the rural population meet the "appropriate" age standards for marriage, they tolerated the lower standard written into the Marriage Law” (Margery Wolf ,1984,p226).If 1949-1949, this phase of history was treated to strengthen the men and women alike, and it was a period of fade of the concept in 1978-1995, then since 1996 outstanding female characters and images showed an emphasis on the process of "men and women differed”. The first category was still a strong woman as the main line, for their remarkable achievements on the job. However, they were no longer being imbedded in "female strong person". The second category of occupied nearly 50% of the outstanding female characters in this period reported was increasingly popular film star. In addition to success in career and marriage, and grade of the notice on consumption were also important features of such groups. The return of individual character and female temperament more and more meet the society and readers for repositioning and expectation of the female.
 

All in all, pursuit of modernity is an ongoing process, it relies on negativity and transcendence for traditional thoughts, and its connotation is always endowed with new elements with the changes of The Times. The female image and role are constantly changing as people in the process of the pursuit of modernity.

 

Reference文献

Tamara Jacka. Back to the Wok: Women and Employment in Chinese Industry in the 1980s. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 24 (Jul., 1990), pp. 1-23.#p#分页标题#e#

Harriet Evans. Past, Perfect or Imperfect: Changing Images of the Ideal Wife. Published by University of California Press, January 2002.

Seungsook Moon. Civil Society and the Women's Movement in South Korea. The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (May, 2002), pp. 473-500.

Margery Wolf. Marriage, Family, and the State in Contemporary China. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 213-236.