Traditional Attitudes towards Women

Question 1

1. What were the ‘3 obediences’ women were traditionally subject to?
2. Women couldn’t own ________ and had no _______ _____
3. What did rich husbands want their wives to be?
   - What did poor husbands want?

Answer 1

1. To father when young.
   To husband when married.
   To son when old.
2. Property, political voice.
3. Pretty adornments.
   - Another labourer in the household.

Question 2

1. What did desperate families resort to to avoid raising a girl?
2. What were wives treated as?
   - What were they expected to do?
   - What couldn’t they do?
3. True or false: Confucian ethics abhorred the re-marriage of widows.

Answer 2

1. Infanticide.
2. Property.
   - Domestic work.
   - Speak out of turn.
3. True

Question 3

1. What member of her husband’s family was a woman particularly subservient to?
2. How did mother-in-laws often compensate for the lack of emotional support in their marriage?
   - Therefore, they were _____ and ________ towards the wife.

Answer 3

1. Mother-in-law.
2. By staying close to their son.
   - Petty and spiteful.

Question 4

1. What was Mao an advocate for long before he came into power?
2. What did he damn arranged marriage as?
3. What 2 events had moved him to this opinion?
4. What did he call women?

Answer 4

1. Women’s rights.
2. ‘Indirect rape.’
3. 1919 suicide of bride Miss Zhao.
   He himself had resisted arranged marriage aged 14.
4. ‘An indespensible force that hold up half the sky.’