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We had the luck of visiting southwest China, yunnan province, and witnessed a society so different from ours. I'll leave the amazing scenery for another day. But let me talk about the gender roles in this society. There seems to be a lot of gender related threads.
Southwest China is quite different in gender roles from the rest of China. This region is explicitly female dominated. Our tour guide said that females own property, marry a male into their family, and the wife is the breadwinner. Even today, women are still overwhelmingly breadwinners despite modern forces hitting the area.
In these families, people hope to give birth to a girl. When a girl is born, there are celebrations and symbolic events. But when a boy is born, some cry, most remain quiet, and the family moves on.
Men are perceived to be inferior than women, not only their intelligence, but also ---and this part is more difficult for moot of us to understand---physical body. We visited some families and saw the arrangements of homes and family photos. In some of these travel photos, the wife was carrying luggage, while the guy had nothing or lesser of a bag!
To marry, a man is admitted to a woman's family and home. He has to do two to three years of hard labor, with the anticipation that once accepted the rest of his life would be quite easy. Look out your coach bus window, farm after farm, you see exclusively women, working hard at what they are perceived to be their best abilities:work, professional skills, and bringing money home to support her husband and children. Men play instruments, chess, do caligraphy and fine arts painting. Men also nurture children, and manage the household. In the afternoon, most of them congregate with other men, smoke, play, chat, do spa, etc. life is indeed very peaceful. But the husband doesn't have the final say in household affairs. Oh well, sit back and relax. Everything is taken care of for ya.
This is a society where women are sent to the front lines while men are kept protected and even paternalistically patronized for their weaknesses, lesser ness, and general lack of capabilities. To tell a husband to "man up" is unheard of, and it is offensive to the wife. You are suggesting that she is not taking care of her husband. That is, in our term, emasculating her, but that's not their term. There is no emasculating. Masculinity is negative. Thus emasculating becomes positive and strong. You are "dewomanising" her, or masculinizng her, meaning you doubt her ability to be a successful breadwinner.
Very intriguing place. I know I would not want to be a woman there.
So in this society I would no longer be responsible for the opening of jars, spiders or anything on the top third of shelves. How many sandwiches do the men have to make per day?
Sounds interesting.
On a serious note, if my wife made enough money I could see myself being a kept man. In the same vein, if I made enough money my wife would see heralded doing the exact same thing.
We had the luck of visiting southwest China, yunnan province, and witnessed a society so different from ours. I'll leave the amazing scenery for another day. But let me talk about the gender roles in this society. There seems to be a lot of gender related threads.
Southwest China is quite different in gender roles from the rest of China. This region is explicitly female dominated. Our tour guide said that females own property, marry a male into their family, and the wife is the breadwinner. Even today, women are still overwhelmingly breadwinners despite modern forces hitting the area.
In these families, people hope to give birth to a girl. When a girl is born, there are celebrations and symbolic events. But when a boy is born, some cry, most remain quiet, and the family moves on.
Men are perceived to be inferior than women, not only their intelligence, but also ---and this part is more difficult for moot of us to understand---physical body. We visited some families and saw the arrangements of homes and family photos. In some of these travel photos, the wife was carrying luggage, while the guy had nothing or lesser of a bag!
To marry, a man is admitted to a woman's family and home. He has to do two to three years of hard labor, with the anticipation that once accepted the rest of his life would be quite easy. Look out your coach bus window, farm after farm, you see exclusively women, working hard at what they are perceived to be their best abilities:work, professional skills, and bringing money home to support her husband and children. Men play instruments, chess, do caligraphy and fine arts painting. Men also nurture children, and manage the household. In the afternoon, most of them congregate with other men, smoke, play, chat, do spa, etc. life is indeed very peaceful. But the husband doesn't have the final say in household affairs. Oh well, sit back and relax. Everything is taken care of for ya.
This is a society where women are sent to the front lines while men are kept protected and even paternalistically patronized for their weaknesses, lesser ness, and general lack of capabilities. To tell a husband to "man up" is unheard of, and it is offensive to the wife. You are suggesting that she is not taking care of her husband. That is, in our term, emasculating her, but that's not their term. There is no emasculating. Masculinity is negative. Thus emasculating becomes positive and strong. You are "dewomanising" her, or masculinizng her, meaning you doubt her ability to be a successful breadwinner.
Very intriguing place. I know I would not want to be a woman there.
This entire post makes that Chinese woman violently speaking English but in an soft tone kinda voice. Truth the men are online investors while the women do yard work. I mean seriously that tour guide must be going insane.
Sounds like this lesbian Asian looking professor back in college. She went on and on about non-heterosexual this and that about men and stuff. This is just silly.
Guess what? Your still a woman, and if all the men just got up and left. Men are the ones who built this world and developed the science for women to fall back on. Guess what? Women are dependent no matter what. They have tampons and pads on 24/7. If not they are screwing with the genetic makeup with birth control pills which have been recalled so many times.
China is still mostly a male dominated society and the fact that you look out of the window and see women working in the fields is the same as other parts of the world. These are the back-breaking jobs which pay less than others and the women are helping the family income by working there.
Anyone who believes that the men do not do anything apart from sit around all day playing cards, does not understand Chinese life. It is true, you do see that both in cities and in the country however, you also find people working "as normal" too. On a coach trip to any country you only see a small cross section of what is available.
I believe that if we all had enough money to pay the bills and also enjoy life then many of us would do just that - fish, play cards, relax. Isn't that what we are all working for but we cannot achieve this until retirement age or well after?
It is our expectations which have been raised by media advertising and the search for acceptance and status in our community. Maybe we do not need a nice car, nice house, swimming pool and large garden to be happy? Maybe we have lost the simple pleasures that a simple lifestyle gives us?
What I would say overall, is that in many 3rd world countries you see the same things.
This regional tribe is about 40,000 in a country with a 1.4 billion.
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