Originally published on the CGS blog on February 20, 2015.
Although the struggle for women’s rights in China is far from over, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has allowed women more opportunities and rights than their ancestors before them, especially in the public sphere. The best thing that the Party did in the name of women’s rights has been to eradicate the practice of foot-binding.
Foot-binding began during the Song (or Sung) Dynasty (960-1279). Over time, this practice trickled down the socioeconomic ladder from the ruling to the lower classes.
Foot-binding can also accurately be called foot mutilation. It involved great risks, including infection and gangrene; some women and girls even died as a result of these complications. But those who willingly participated in it believed they were culturally obligated, as sometimes this was the only way a lady could improve her status and marry into a family of higher economic or political rank.
Besides being considered aesthetically pleasing, bound feet were also a symbol of women being inferior and dependent on men, as they couldn’t move about so easily. It was also believed that foot-binding helped to protect women’s chastity as well as devote their bodies’ energy into reproduction.
This practice undoubtedly reduced rural Chinese women’s economic productivity; some still managed to work in the fields, but having their feet bound made it harder for them.
Opposition to foot-binding occurred both inside and outside of China over different periods of time and by different rulers. Unfortunately, it seems that these leaders were not able to create the social, economic, and political conditions that succeeding generations did to end the practice altogether.
Foot-binding ended in stages that involved imperial edicts and campaigns by Western Christian Missionary organizations starting in the late 19th Century. The former Republic of China (1911-1925) outlawed the practice of binding the feet of women (although many women and girls still had their feet bound anyway). The practice also decreased as social opportunities for women arose via economic development, and finally the Communist Party under Mao Zedong eliminated the practice during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960).
Today in some countries in Africa, the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) remains popular as a cultural practice that causes grave harm to the women and girls who undergo it in their efforts to attain socio-cultural goals. The reasons for the practice of FGM are almost identical to the reasons for foot-binding in China.
However, the practice of FGM has a longer history and also has spread to other groups, even within modern times and even in industrialized countries. Foot-binding didn’t spread to other nations or empires like Japan and Vietnam, which were heavily influenced by Chinese civilization.
The places where FGM is commonly practiced have not been able to create the conditions necessary for the practice to cease, unlike China. However, if socioeconomic conditions can improve, female genital mutilation might become less common as time goes on.
Even though China can’t claim by democratic countries’ standards to have the best sociopolitical human rights model in the world, at least it was able to end foot-binding, a practice that caused great suffering to women seeking to adhere to socio-cultural standards in a male-dominated society.
