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Group 6 (Women in China) - 39 views

started by lili_teng_foti on 18 Oct 10
  • Christina D'Ambrogio
    #2 Christina D'Ambrogio on 19 Oct 10
     
    I know that the traditional roles of women in China was to take care of the family, bear many children, especially boys, and obey her parents and husband, and probably obey her mother-in-law and father-in-law. I would say that the women's status would be near the bottom of the totem pole.

    I'll search and see what I can find about the traditional views of what a Chinese woman role was in the family.

    Rachel, what were you saying at the end of class today about women's roles in different environments?
  • Lan Truong
    #3 Lan Truong on 19 Oct 10
     
    What I know about roles of women in China is that there is a lot expected of women however very little credit is given to them for the things they do. In the past, I believe, women's roles were usually in the house. They usually took care of household chores, taking care of children, extended family members, and in laws. Women usually did not know how to read or write unless they came from a wealthy family. In poor familes that did not have a male son, women (daughters and wives) were expected to help out outside the home (farming) and inside the home.

    Also, if I am correct, I know that women's roles in the King's palace was to please him and to bear him children. These women usually came from rich wealthy backgrounds. It was usually consider an honor for women to become one of the king's concubine.

    However, I am pretty sure it is much different today, although there is still some inequality between men and womens roles, I think that women have come a long way and are getting their hands wet in a variety of things.
  • Rachel Ravelo
    #4 Rachel Ravelo on 19 Oct 10
     
    I know that women are traditionally submissive in Chinese culture and maintain very traditional roles. In ancient China, they had their feet bound for beauty, and also to display wealth. Women in the homes are the ultimate caretakers, caring for everyone and and everything, with little credit being given to them; and this is the norm.

    Christina, I was thinking each one of us go do a ppt. examining the different roles women have in varying spheres. Such as, women in the home, women in public life (business, political,etc.), and women in education. I know those are pretty broad, but I think it could be a start. We could dedicate a few slides to pre-modern China and then examine specifically current China, and how it has all developed over the years.

    Looking at our posts, it looks like we all have pretty negative connotations on what it is to be woman in China, hopefully we will be able to counter that and prove things aren't so bad!
  • Rachel Ravelo
    #5 Rachel Ravelo on 20 Oct 10
     
    Here are a couple of websites I found.
    I'm sorry I didn't highlight anything. I can't exactly figure out diigo, but I can show you all tomorrow some things that I noticed and took note on.

    http://www.womenofchina.cn/
    This is a Chinese website dedicated to women. I feel like this could be a really great resource. It mentions tributes to business women and various groups in China that work for humanitarian issues (ie. women's federation).

    http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinwomn.html
    This is pretty much an outline of everything we should probably discuss in our project. It's from CUNY- Brooklyn so it's a legitimate article, despite it's appearance.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
    I know wikipedia is horrible, but this provides an outline for women in the PRC. If anything it can be a baseline and we can do further research from what we pick up in this article.

    This is all just a start, but from what I've seen online there are some great resources.
  • Lan Truong
    #6 Lan Truong on 21 Oct 10
     
    I think that we all have this idea that women in chinaare oppressed and less equal and I definitely agree with Rachel in hoping to get pass these negative connotations that we established. As I am looking up sources for our presentation, I am seeing that it wasn't that bad for women in China. Women have done quite a bit in the history of China and even presently. I think it is a good idea to break up women's role in different areas of China. I think Education, business, home and government is a GREAT start to understanding the roles of women.

    http://www.colorq.org/articles/article.aspx?d=asianwomen&x=chinhistory
    This site seems to be very good in stories regarding women in history and what they have done for china. It breaks it up into different dynasties and it's really neat.
    http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1106354/the_role_of_women_in_chinese_culture_pg3.html?cat=38
    This article gives a pretty good synopsis of women and the role and a lot of what we talked about in class. However, it is a tad long so it might be tedious to go through it.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2608687/pdf/jnma00491-0054.pdf
    This is a research done by a doctor and it seems to be really reliable. I think that it would be a good source to use because it highlights women and the role of maternal care.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101399.html
    This other article talks about women's role in poverty, I think this is another good point if we want to focus on it at all in our presentation. We can even talk about women's role in the higher class, compared to working/poor class.
  • Lan Truong
    #7 Lan Truong on 21 Oct 10
     
    I think by Friday, we should start summarizing what key themes we want to touch upon in our presentations and then look for more sources and at each other's to get a good idea of what is worth presenting on.
  • Christina D'Ambrogio
    #8 Christina D'Ambrogio on 21 Oct 10
     
    http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~jejackso/Family%20Formations.htm
    I found this source that gives a brief summary of what the women's role in the family is. It starts from the paragraph, "The familial role..." I highlighted it using Diigo. I hope it works and you can see what I highlighted. Professor, is this a legal source? Its from a professor's webpage who works at Mount Holyoke College.

    http://www.chinavoc.com/history/tang/women.htm
    This link is pretty good in talking about the women's role in society and in family life during the Tang dynasty. Also, if you link on "Song" on the left side and click "Outstanding Female Li Qingzhao", then they talk about Li Qingzhao who was a famous female poet of this time. This shows that women were trying to break away from the traditional views and gain their own voice. This link would definitely work well with our topic of Women's role in education.

    http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson10/lesson10.php?s=2
    This link is a excerpt of a newspaper article written in 1890 for a Shanghai newspaper. I think its really good in stating what Confucius views were in relation to women, and the author states how these views have negatively effected the lives of Chinese women, whether it be wives or daughters.

    http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson10/lesson10.php?s=1
    Here I highlighted a line in an article from 1843 that states Confucianism is the primary offender of why Chinese women has experienced a lot of pain and sorrow and why they weren't able to have a lot of advances in education and society. This is the line I highlighted. Its in the second paragraph:
    "Confucian philosophy has done its best to unfit a Chinese for the possession of such an heritage, by assigning to woman nothing but the privilege of drudging for her lord."

    I have to go to class now, but I'll find more stuff later on today.
  • Christina D'Ambrogio
    #9 Christina D'Ambrogio on 23 Oct 10
     
    http://www.bellaonline.org/articles/art29973.asp
    Brief summary of Chinese women role in the household and it specifically states that its a different view than what we traditionally negatively think of what the role of a Chinese women is.

    http://www.buzzle.com/articles/women-in-the-ancient-chinese-culture.html
    This is another summary of what we've been talking about...plus it gives two famous women in ancient China (Empress Wu and Xi Shi) if we want to mention them.

    http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/article/China/Women-in-Chinese-Culture/1788
    This talks a little bit about employment and education for Chinese women, and the last paragraph I highlighted says how rural women still don't have that great of opportunities to get a good education as women in urban areas.

    So how exactly are we breaking this up into three parts?
    I understand how we can talk about "The women's role in the family/household comparing ancient times to now", "The women's role in receiving an education and contributing to education comparing ancient times to now", but what is exactly our third topic? Is it famous Chinese women throughout history? I don't know if we'd have enough material to talk about Chinese women's role in the workforce.

    I'll cover women's role in the household...what do you guys want to do? Do you want to meet later tomorrow night (like after 8pm) to have an idea of exactly what each of us are saying?
  • Lan Truong
    #10 Lan Truong on 23 Oct 10
     
    I think Famy and Education is good to focus on. If you focus on Family Christina, it is a huge category to talk about. As I look over our readings I see topic that are worth going into further detail (regarding family) about so that's also a good place if you see what you can talk about under famly. And also since there is alot to talk about under the Family subcat we might consider breaking it up if needed?

    Another thing that we can talk about is how confucianism, buddhism and taoism affected the roles of women. is this two small of a sub category.? and/ Or talking about women in government/policy/ china's land and people. Also in this, I can tie into how social class has shaped women's roles as well.I can also talk about te role of governtment/laws/ policies in shaping the role of women. I am reading through some articles and there seems to be a good amount of ifo already so if I dwelved deeper then we can find more. What do you guys think?
  • Lan Truong
    #11 Lan Truong on 23 Oct 10
     
    Oh yeah, Christina, meeting at 8pm Wednesday works fine for me. I think itll be good to debrief.
  • Rachel Ravelo
    #12 Rachel Ravelo on 24 Oct 10
     
    I can look at women in education and tie that into women and religion. I can do a sort of overview on the religious and academic life of women. But yes meeting tonight at 8 would be perfect. Just name a time and place and I'll be there!
  • Rachel Ravelo
    #13 Rachel Ravelo on 24 Oct 10
     
    So as of right now, we have women in policy (Lan), women in the family (Christina), and women in academics and religion? I think that that is a good overview, but whoever wants to go first ( and I can even do if you want or we could put it together tonight and all three of us present it) should include several intro slides about women in China, addressing the generalizations and how they are false, etc, just sort of a where women stand and a very broad explanation of the climate towards women in china.
  • Lan Truong
    #14 Lan Truong on 24 Oct 10
     
    For my presentation, I am laying the ground works fo the different factors that affected women's roles, so I am touching upon the roles of confuc., taoism, buddhism, social class, govt policies/law . I'll briefly talk about how women have come a long way but you guys def. can add more to that.
  • Christina D'Ambrogio
    #15 Christina D'Ambrogio on 24 Oct 10
     
    Hey Rachel,

    Come to our dorm room at 8pm...we're in Loyola 146. My number is 508-713-2777 if you need to get in.
  • Christina D'Ambrogio
    #16 Christina D'Ambrogio on 26 Oct 10
     
    This is my reflection on the presentation: I think our presentation went well and we all did a good job. Our presentations tided together well, so I think that was a good concept that we had. It seemed like people paid attention and got a good understanding of women's roles in china because they contributed to our discussion at the end.
  • Lan Truong
    #17 Lan Truong on 26 Oct 10
     
    I think our presentation went well, I think we gave the class a good overview of the role of women in China. I hope that we were able to present our materials clearly. I hope that despite the negative connotations of the roles of women in China, they were able to see that there are some positive outcomes and progress for women in China too.
  • Rachel Ravelo
    #18 Rachel Ravelo on 27 Oct 10
     
    I think our presentation went very well. I feel like we were able to start broad and work down to a narrower topic, which i think our project strong.Ultimately, we were able to view a wide spectrum of women in China. I agree with Lan in that we were able to show that women in China are progressing towards equality.
    Also, The class seemed to be interested in what we had to say, which is important. I had a really great time working with Lan and Christina and I think we were successful.

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