Thanks for this! It wouldnât have occurred to me to consider the decline of footbinding as a case study of moral progress,
I think youâve probably noted this and perhaps didnât mention it because itâs not directly relevant to the main questions youâre investigating, but I think itâs important to note for someone who only reads this post that having bound feet was a status symbolâit began among the social elite and spread over time to lower social classes, remained a status symbol because families who needed girls to conduct agricultural labor could not partake in the practice, and in practice an incentive to do it was to increase marriage prospects.
Iâm actually a bit unsure how true it is that the status element of footbinding was important. Certainly thatâs an established narrative in the literature (e.g. Shepherd buys it).
âIn our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more women married up than down, but in all regions, the majority did not marry hypergamously. Moreover, for most regions, we found no statistically significant difference between the chances of a footbound girl versus a not-bound girl in marrying into a wealthier household, despite a common cultural belief that footbinding would improve girlsâ marital prospects.â
Also, I think itâs not clear how true it is that âfamilies who needed girls to conduct agricultural labor could not partakeâ:
Many scholars note anecdotal evidence of footbound women working in fields
In Brown and Satterthwaite-Phillipsâ model, performing agricultural labour is not significant, although girls who did agricultural labour were less likely to be footbound. I canât immediately find a figure for % of footbound girls who did agricultural labour in their dataset unfortunately
Brown in their review article puts forward several arguments against Shepherdâs view:
Bossen and Gates note âGiven the wide distribution of binding we found among poor rural populations, it seems unlikely that elite emulation was the main consideration.â
Some other related things Iâve pulled from my notes are arguments in Brownâs review article against Shepherdâs view:
â99 percent of women married regardless of how many had ever bound. So bound feet were clearly not needed to be able to marry. The BBG data show regional variation in whether being footbound at marriage age led to hypergamy, with significant correlations only for Sichuan (primarily from two counties) and not for North, Central, and Southwest China.17 Nevertheless, about 47 percent of womenâeven in Sichuanâmarried to households at the same wealth level as their natal households.â
Shepherdâs Taiwan data shows earlier marriage for footbound girls, but later marriage could also indicate more economic value to the parental household, so this isnât a clear signal
âmost ever-bound women had released their feet before marriageâ
Thanks for this! It wouldnât have occurred to me to consider the decline of footbinding as a case study of moral progress,
I think youâve probably noted this and perhaps didnât mention it because itâs not directly relevant to the main questions youâre investigating, but I think itâs important to note for someone who only reads this post that having bound feet was a status symbolâit began among the social elite and spread over time to lower social classes, remained a status symbol because families who needed girls to conduct agricultural labor could not partake in the practice, and in practice an incentive to do it was to increase marriage prospects.
Thanks for this point.
Iâm actually a bit unsure how true it is that the status element of footbinding was important. Certainly thatâs an established narrative in the literature (e.g. Shepherd buys it).
Brown, Bossen and Hill have an article Iâve only skimmed called âMarriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China: A Reconsideration of Gender, Economics, and Meaning in Social Causationâ (link here: https://ââwww.cambridge.org/ââcore/ââjournals/ââjournal-of-asian-studies/ââarticle/ââmarriage-mobility-and-footbinding-in-pre1949-rural-china-a-reconsideration-of-gender-economics-and-meaning-in-social-causation/ââCF5C5F1E441C5E2BF56BBA8B56F55835), which argues as follows:
âIn our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more women married up than down, but in all regions, the majority did not marry hypergamously. Moreover, for most regions, we found no statistically significant difference between the chances of a footbound girl versus a not-bound girl in marrying into a wealthier household, despite a common cultural belief that footbinding would improve girlsâ marital prospects.â
Thereâs an article I havenât read called âFootbinding, Hypergamy, and Handicraft Labor: Evaluating the Labor Market Explanation of Footbindingâ, which sounds like it pushes back on these arguments. Link here: https://ââlink.springer.com/ââarticle/ââ10.1007/ââs40806-020-00271-9
Also, I think itâs not clear how true it is that âfamilies who needed girls to conduct agricultural labor could not partakeâ:
Many scholars note anecdotal evidence of footbound women working in fields
In Brown and Satterthwaite-Phillipsâ model, performing agricultural labour is not significant, although girls who did agricultural labour were less likely to be footbound. I canât immediately find a figure for % of footbound girls who did agricultural labour in their dataset unfortunately Brown in their review article puts forward several arguments against Shepherdâs view:
Bossen and Gates note âGiven the wide distribution of binding we found among poor rural populations, it seems unlikely that elite emulation was the main consideration.â
Some other related things Iâve pulled from my notes are arguments in Brownâs review article against Shepherdâs view:
â99 percent of women married regardless of how many had ever bound. So bound feet were clearly not needed to be able to marry. The BBG data show regional variation in whether being footbound at marriage age led to hypergamy, with significant correlations only for Sichuan (primarily from two counties) and not for North, Central, and Southwest China.17 Nevertheless, about 47 percent of womenâeven in Sichuanâmarried to households at the same wealth level as their natal households.â
Shepherdâs Taiwan data shows earlier marriage for footbound girls, but later marriage could also indicate more economic value to the parental household, so this isnât a clear signal
âmost ever-bound women had released their feet before marriageâ