Interface News Reporter | Forest people
Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon
"Is it within feminism that feminists who don't marry have a higher status? When you observe people like us who are married, do you always feel that we are engaged in a kind of stupid happiness? ”
This is the question that three female bloggers asked a Japanese sociologist in a recent video conversation. Regardless of the controversy caused by the dialogue video, this question may be a real question in the minds of many women who have entered or are about to enter marriage.
In fact, the mere fact that the issue can be raised in public speaks volumes about how far Chinese women have come on the path to equal rights since the May Fourth Movement. Rosenlee Li-Hsiang Lisa, an expert on Chinese women's studies, points out in Confucianism and Women that "woman" is a word that only appeared in China in the 2020s, and before the May Fourth Movement's written "modernization", the concept of "woman" was expressed by the word "woman", "woman" refers to married women, and "female" refers to young (unmarried) girls. It can be seen that "in contrast to the Western expression of the word 'woman' as a natural existence that is preferred and independent of family and social relations, Chinese women as women are mainly recognized as family and relatives." ”
Over the past century or so, women in many parts of the globe have been able to step out of the interior and into the wider public world. But true gender equality has not yet been achieved, which is fraught, and some feminists call for women to seize the existing opportunities to become self-reliant, which to some extent exacerbates the divisions within women. As Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of The Leap of Ideas, notes:
"By competing with men, women give up some of their traditional advantages – respect from men and a lot of informal power; By joining the workforce, their role as housewives and mothers adds another layer of exploitation, with stress and overwork ensuing. Some women who want to stay at home and concentrate on their husbands and children find themselves at a double disadvantage: being exploited by men and being taunted by 'sisters'. ”
What does marriage mean to women in the 21st century? If marriage and family remain inescapable of women's life experiences now and in the foreseeable future, what kind of concepts and institutional arrangements do we envision so that all women can live according to their hearts?
"The Leap of Ideas"
By Philippe Fernando-Amesto, translated by Zhao Jingou
CITIC Publishing Group 2023-1
The evolution of marriage: from economic and political system to romantic love
Fernando Amesto points out that the "nuclear family"—partners who raise their offspring together—existed as early as the time of Homo erectus, and marriage elevated this personal pact to the institutional level. The earliest written evidence of the idea that marriage is a contract in which the state participates or executes appears in the Code of Hammurabi, the first well-established written code in existence. The Code of Hammurabi, enacted around 1776 BC, defines marriage as a relationship that is ritualized through a written contract. The Code provides for the dissolution of marriage by either party in cases of infertility, abandonment and what we now call "irreparable breakdown". In addition, adultery by either party is punishable by death.
"The institution of marriage is surprisingly strong. In most societies, people desperately compete for the right to control marriage, and in the modern West such rivalry between church and state is particularly fierce," writes Fernando Amesto, "where state intervention in marriage is more due to traditional inertia than to any lasting utility." ”
In Marriage for Love, American family scholar Stephanie Coontz begins by reminding readers that the primary purpose of marriage in most human history is not personal needs, male and female love, and offspring reproduction, "Marriage is related not only to finding a lifelong partner, raising beloved children, but also about obtaining excellent in-laws and increasing family labor." In his book, Kuntz cites anthropologist Edmond Leach as arguing that marriage should first be defined as a form of property, not as a means of regulating sex and procreation, and that it guarantees how property, titles, and social status are legitimately passed on from generation to generation.
From this perspective, it is not difficult to see that marriage has been an economic and political institution until today. Kuntz notes that historically accepted institutions of marriage have obvious similarities:
"Marriage generally determines the rights and obligations related to sexuality, gender roles, in-law relations and the legitimacy of offspring. At the same time, it gives members of marriage specific rights and roles in the broader social context. It usually determines the responsibilities of the spouses and often also determines the responsibilities of the two families towards each other and reinforces these responsibilities. It also allows the property and status of the head of the family or husband and wife to be passed on to the next generation in an orderly manner. ”
Breaking down the above passage, marriage has had the following important functions in most of history. The first is to establish cooperative relationships between families and communities, so that a family can gather labor and resources, because one of the most important reasons for marriage, from princes and nobles to common people, is that one cannot survive on one's own. The second is to establish legal inheritance rights, which is particularly important in patrilineal societies. "In societies where inheritance depends on the legitimacy of offspring, marriage is often a complex ritual that confers a set of rights and obligations on a partner – but only if all procedures and social exchanges required by law or custom are fulfilled," Kuntz notes. ”
Marriage for Love: Marriage and Love's Past and Present
By Stephanie Koontz, translated by Liu Junyu
CITIC Publishing Group 2020-3
In some historical periods, this function of marriage was even enough to influence geopolitics: after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe was once again disintegrated into a large number of small states, nobles and rulers consolidated or expanded their power through in-laws, and frequent or easy wives changed wives led to bloody struggles over inheritance, intensifying competition between political rivals. To that end, Christianity, which prohibited polygamy and severely restricted divorce and remarriage, found room to spread by establishing norms for legal inheritance.
Moreover, marriage is also about organizing the division of labor and the distribution of power according to gender and age, which is why many feminists see marriage as a form of gender oppression. In this respect, the premodern Chinese family is a typical example, as Rosalie puts it, "the collection of three cultural rules, filial piety, lineage and ancestor worship, serves as a powerful cultural basis for gender oppression." According to the Confucian cultural ideal, the gender division of labor gives men and women a series of different but complementary responsibilities and obligations, and men and women are separated by public-private, state-state, internal-external spaces into different fields. Women establish their place in the world in the home sphere as daughters, wives, and mothers (on a purely conceptual level, limiting women to the home sphere does not mean that women are inherently inferior to men or belong to men, but rather complement men's functions in the field outside the home). Women lack formal rights and social legitimacy to enter the external spheres of politics, society, literature, and so on—of course, there have been outstanding women who have broken through this line throughout real history—and women of all classes must embrace the concept of "three subordinations," which are subordinate to fathers, husbands, and sons at different stages of life.
But a new type of marriage system emerged in the late 18th century. In the 17th century, a series of political, economic, and cultural transformations in Europe began to weaken the old function of marriage, encouraging individuals to seek partners on the basis of affection, and allowing lovers to challenge the right of outsiders to interfere in their lives. In the late 18th century, the cultural ideal of free love and marriage for love was the first to triumph in Western Europe and North America. "The romanticization of love-based marriage in the 19th century, and the eroticization of the 20th century, are logical steps in the evolution of this new form of marriage." Kuntz wrote. The modern ideal of marriage consists of the following elements:
"First of all, they must love each other deeply and choose each other without being influenced by outside pressure. From that moment on, they must put their partner at the forefront of their lives, putting the relationship above any other relationship that competes with it. We believe that husbands and wives have the most important responsibilities and deepest loyalty to each other and their children. Parents and both family members should not be allowed to interfere in the marriage. They should express their feelings openly and honestly, and they should discuss issues frankly. Of course, they should also be faithful sexual partners to each other. ”
The Paradox of Free Love: The Complexity of Contemporary Marriage and the Self-Adjustment of Patriarchy
In the 20th century, this new set of values about marriage and sexual behavior spread around the world, even in rural China, where gender attitudes have long been lagging behind. In the 90s, anthropologist Yan Yunxiang conducted fieldwork in rural northern China and found that the horizontal husband and wife relationship had replaced the father-son relationship in the traditional Chinese family, becoming the main axis of family relations and the basis of the family ideal shared by most villagers, and the authority of the family was shifting from the older generation to the younger generation.
At the same time, in the last quarter of the 20th century, many countries around the world witnessed a decline in marriage rates and an increase in divorce rates, and the institution of marriage became more and more crumbling. This is undoubtedly shocking for those who lived through the "golden age of marriage" in the 50s, where 95% of the marriageable population was married for 15 years after World War II in North America and Western Europe. While marriage was unprecedentedly democratized, it also made the cultural ideal of "men supporting the family and women caring for the family" a reality for many ordinary people for the first time, and people have since regarded it as "traditional marriage". Kuntz points out that as early as the end of the 18th century, it was warned that personal happiness as the goal of marriage, intimacy and sexual satisfaction as the criteria for successful marriage, will eventually destroy the stability of the marriage institution, a prediction finally realized in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century.
For thousands of years, marriage has served multiple economic, political and social functions, but its status is being weakened by a number of factors: starting in the 50s, more and more married women have joined the labor force in clerkical, sales, and service jobs (although there is a large gap in pay levels compared to men); In 1960, the oral contraceptive ethinylestradiol methyl ether tablets (Enovid) were officially launched, setting off a sexual revolution, and for the first time in history, women were able to decide independently whether to separate sex from childbearing.
Chizuko Ueno also mentioned in her conversation with psychologist Shinda Koyoko "The Choice of Being a Woman" that the sexual revolution in the 70s blossomed all over the world, and the disintegration of the trinity of love, sex, and marriage also quietly began in Japan. Under the influence of social movements in the sixties and seventies, legislators in North America and Western Europe repealed most of the remaining patriarchal laws, redefined marriage as a bond between two equal individuals, rather than a union of two distinctly different gender roles, and women's legal status and civil rights were effectively improved. Another major effect of the civil rights movement was to weaken the traditional role of defining the legitimacy of marriage, and the rights of children born out of wedlock were recognized and protected in many European and American countries. In addition, the recession and inflation of the '70s essentially boosted women's employment – men in traditional manufacturing jobs were particularly hard hit by the recession, and men's income alone was no longer enough to keep their families afloat.
Kuntz notes that these changes have fueled gender conflicts in Europe and the United States. The tension and even hostility between the sexes are not unfamiliar to us today:
Single women complain that modern men are afraid of taking responsibility for a relationship. Men complain that modern women demand the same respect as men at work, yet still expect men to pay for dinner. Male breadwinners have to work longer hours to gain recognition. Full-time housewives are anxiously wary of the growing possibility of divorce. When both husbands and wives have jobs, they often quarrel over the division of household chores. Working women struggle to find reliable childcare and hate husbands who don't feel they have the same responsibility to do so. ”
Patriarchy is still entrenched in the private sphere, which is why women have more entanglements and concerns about marriage. According to the analysis in the book "Patriarchy and Capitalism", "human production, nurturing, care, escort and other labor related to the reproduction of life" has always been regarded as free labor that any woman in the private sphere can perform, and the modern capitalist market "commoditizes" the labor that creates specific wealth and commodities without "commoditizing" the labor of human resource reproduction. Making women bear the labor and costs of human resource reproduction for free is a complicity between patriarchy and capitalism.
What marriage means to women today varies from person to person, and there are many counterintuitive paradoxes. Kuntz cited data from the United States to point out that the "gender oppression" and female agency in a marriage are positively correlated with class to some extent: highly educated people are more likely than other groups to accept staying single or having children out of wedlock, and at the same time, they are more likely to marry and have children out of wedlock than less educated groups; Educated couples tend to have higher incomes and less traditional attitudes toward gender roles, factors that contribute to general increases in marital satisfaction. However, more educated couples are more likely to divorce if they are dissatisfied with their marriage, especially if they are financially self-reliant and more able to leave an unsatisfactory marriage. On the other hand, couples in dual-income families also tend to share the work of raising children more equally, resulting in happier wives and less likely to file for divorce; Women with higher incomes have more influence in their marriages than in the past and are more likely to find husbands who support, at least in principle, gender equality.
Women's education level can also predict the probability of marriage failure to some extent. A study by the UCLA Marriage and Family Development Program found that 60 percent of marriages of women without high-Chinese jobs ended in divorce, and 1 in 3 female college students divorced — poverty, unemployment and children from a previous relationship all increase the risk of marriage failure.
Chizuko Ueno found that in the 20 years following the period of high economic growth (from the 50s to the 70s of the 20th century), the division among Japanese women became more and more obvious, and the differences in the way of life and work of professional and part-time housewives, full-time and temporary workers, etc., broke the class ties between women. In the same way, women are victims and beneficiaries from another, such as "backward" professional housewives who are actually of high economic status, while more "progressive" working housewives actually belong to the lower economic class that has to work to subsidize the family. She noted that despite the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act for Women and Men in 1985, there had been a resurgence of "professional housewife aspirations" among young Japanese women, and that behind this conservative trend lurked the desire of women to rise in the class.
Women's choices, situations, and personal feelings are increasingly difficult to describe in a generalized way, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the problems women face are closely related to the political and economic picture of society as a whole, not just the result of individual choices. Chizuko Ueno reminds us that the era of "individual theory" has only just begun for those who want to carefully explore women's issues.
Epilogue: New possibilities for women's bonding
The book "The Choice as a Woman" argues that when feminism merges with neoliberal ideology of "self-determination, self-responsibility", she criticizes some people who believe that "feminism is about giving powerful single women a voice". In fact, as long as housework is considered "free labor" for women to take on within the family, patriarchy will not die and will affect all women, whether married or unmarried.
A History of Women: The 20th Century Volume reveals that the structure of gender inequality changes to adapt to changing times, and that women are always reminded that you can get an education and get a job, but it can't be detrimental to the family. Social crises often reveal the truth that women can be sacrificed at any time: during the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment laws in many countries stipulated that women received less benefits than men, and that most occupations performed by women (such as domestic service) were not covered. When unemployment is high, Europeans' knee-jerk reaction is to deny women, especially married women, job opportunities, and their proper place within the family. After World War II, gender discrimination remained an unspoken rule in the European workplace, as exemplified by the growth of women's part-time jobs. The dual labor market, consisting of a highly skilled and efficient male labor market and a low-skilled, low-paying, low-value female labor market, once again maintains women's second-class labor status, and women are told that part-time work can balance work and family, but in practice limits women's career development.
A History of Women: The 20th Century Volume
[fr] George Dolby et al., eds., translated by Yuan Yuan and Wang Lusha
Zhejiang University Press, 2022-12
Structural inequalities require all women to come together to be shaken, and there are precedents in women's history. From the 90s of the 19th century to the 2020s, the focus of feminist discussions was to make the work of caring for the family valued and paid. A trend emerged called maternal feminism, based on the assumption that motherhood was not only a "specific problem" or a separate issue, but also a collection of women's living circumstances. Some feminists see the fight for state subsidies for mothers as a strategy of women's emancipation, valuing both the dignity and exploitation of mothers, as Helen Stoke put it, "Once women become aware of fertility... This is the deepest root cause of the problem of salary and freedom, and they will not stop fighting until they achieve the freedom, independence and recognition they deserve, because they contribute to society. "This trend has spread to many countries in Europe and the United States, affecting important welfare legislation, although it has never fully realized its demands.
Whether to enter into marriage or not should not hinder the bond between women, and "women" are no longer just a collection of "married women" and "unmarried women", but women as a whole. Their collective well-being depends on how women who have the ability and choice can help each other with more women, rather than compete for the competition, otherwise true gender equality will become increasingly elusive.
Resources:
[day] Chizuko Ueno, [day] Shinta Koyoko. "The Choice of Being a Woman". International Culture Publishing Company.2023.
Philippe Fernando-Amesto. The Leap of Ideas: A History of Human Thought in the Later Years of 20 Years. CITIC Publishing Group.2023.
Rosalie. "Confucianism and Women". Jiangsu People's Publishing House.2022.
[day] Chizuko Ueno. The Making and End of the Modern Family (Expanded Edition). Commercial Press.2022.
[fr] George Dolby. A History of Women: The Twentieth Century Volume. Zhejiang University Press.2022.
Stephanie Kuntz. "Marriage for Love: Marriage and Love's Past and Present". CITIC Publishing Group.2020.
[day] Chizuko Ueno. Patriarchy and Capitalism. Zhejiang University Press.2020.
YAN Yunxiang. "The Individuation of Chinese Society". Shanghai Translation Press.2012.