This project examines the labor and economic contributions made by Chinese girls and women in the early 20th century, before and during industrialization. It tests whether the now-defunct practice of footbinding served as a form of labor control, pushing girls and women to participate in lucrative handcraft production. The project contributes to gender studies, economic development studies, and their integration. If, as it turns out, economic change is more important in eliminating practices that are often viewed as injurious to women's bodies (such as female circumcision), then efforts to change these practices must address their economic basis, and not only work on the level of education and advocacy. Evidence from southern China suggests that footbinding was strongly correlated with local economic practices, but the southern pattern has never been tested in north and central China. Time is running out, as most elderly women who are the best source of information will be gone within the decade. This project surveys 1600 women about their own labor and that of their older female relatives, which will produce data on about 8,000 women going back to the 1880s. Sixteen sites across eight provinces were carefully selected to include locales with historical data available and to represent regional diversity.
This project addresses the common misconceptions that girls played an insignificant economic role in China prior to the emergence of factory industrialism, and that footbinding, driven by cultural beliefs about beauty and sexuality, made female labor nearly worthless. Producing more accurate estimates of the labor inputs of Chinese girls and women contributes to contemporary research on global economic history. Understanding the economic implications of footbinding, which was once at the center of heated debate over women's bodily well-being, social integration, traditional cultural values, and human rights, contributes to current policy debates about women's rights.
This project gathered retrospective information about family background, different kinds of work done, marriage, and footbinding during the early to mid-20th century for some 2700 rural Chinese women across 11 provinces. Using these materials as well as comparable information previously gathered on 5000 rural Chinese women in Sichuan Province, the PI and her research collaborators have examined 3 major assumptions about female economic contributions: Chinese girls and women did little work before 1950 because so many had their feet bound (wrapped tightly with cloth to compress the feet, resulting in pressure breaks to some of the bones in the feet). Footbinding was necessary for marriage before 1950. Footbinding was stopped by government prohibitions. Project materials and analyses suggest all 3 of these assumptions are mistaken. Footbound girls and women did a great deal of work: in agricultural fields; in handicraft production, especially spinning and weaving cloth for clothing and bedding; and in other kinds of labor, including not only housework and childcare but also caring for livestock, gathering firewood, and working in family workshops and businesses. Those girls and women who worked in handicraft production for their natal families were more likely to be footbound than those who did not. Footbinding may have been a way to boost female handwork labor. Footbinding was not necessary for marriage, nor were footbound women more likely to marry to a wealthier household than never-bound women, except in some counties in Sichuan. Moreover, knowledge of government prohibitions of footbinding did not make it less likely that girls would be footbound before 1950. With these results, this project has intellectual merit because it revises long-held understandings of girls’ and women’s economic contributions to Chinese society in the early and mid-20th century. It suggests that gender must be taken more closely into account in economic development efforts today. The project also has broader implications for current political efforts to counter female genital cutting and honor killings because many of these efforts model their reforms on mistaken assumptions about the end of footbinding in China. By showing that footbinding was not an economically disinterested custom, this project indicates the need to assess whether there may be economic factors influencing female genital cutting and honor killings.
