Female Roles in India and China - Essay Example

Female Roles in India and China
Gender roles vary from nation to nation and from time to time, in certain regions, women are expected to be subordinates to men, and obedient to their families, while in certain regions such as America, they are expected to be individualistic. Females in India perform three main gender roles; they are expected to be daughters, wives, and daughters-in-law and while functioning in these roles they are expected to behave in a different manner. In the ancient Chinese era, women were expected to be inferior to males and continue to operate as mothers, daughters, and wives. As mothers, they used to take care of their homes and their children and ensure that their daughters end up marrying rich people.
In India, a female serves several roles throughout her life at different stages of life. Every female is expected to go through two stages of life, the first stage is when an Indian female assumes the position of a daughter in an Indian family and the second stage is when she assumes the position of being a wife along with a daughter-in-law in her life. As an Indian female child or daughter, the parents of an Indian girl expect her to enjoy her life, concentrate on her studies and become an obedient child to her parents. For example, Sita in Sarena Nanda’s article named “Arranging a Marriage in India” states that as a child her family does not expect her to find a boyfriend and a future partner for her and instead want her to leave this task on their shoulders while she continues to have fun and enjoy their life (Hirschberg 192). This even means that parents of Indian families expect their daughters to be dependent on them for major decisions in their life such as deciding about the person whom she is going to get married to and spend their life with. Another important point stated in Nanda’s article is that when a girl is married to a boy in India, the girl not only gets married to the individual male, she even agrees to be committed to the entire family of her husband. For example, when Sita was asked about how she can get married to a person she does not know, she responded that her parents conduct a background check on the family of her future possible husband. This means that at an early age, her parents have already injected it in her mind that after she gets married she even has to serve the family of her husband.
In the ancient Chinese era, Chinese families expected female children to accept that the males of the society were elites and they were subordinates to them. This is evident in the article named “China Chic: East Meets West” as it has been stated that the activity of foot binding was limited to the female gender and at a very early age this activity was conducted to ensure that the size of female feet remains smaller than the size of the male feet to symbolize male dominance (Steele 416). The females of the ancient Chinese era were even expected to accept that no matter how weak their male counterparts were, they were still elites and dominant. This explanation is correct as foot binding was especially undertaken during the period when the Chinese were experiencing defeats and in order to boost the morale of the military officials, foot binding was used to make them feel superior. Chinese women were even expected by their family members, especially by their mothers to look sexually attractive so they can compete against concubines in order to attract their male counterparts. Steele asserts that small feet were perceived to be very sexually attractive, thus females of ancient Chinese used to be involved in the act of foot binding. The process of foot binding even reflects that Chinese women during the ancient Chinese period were expected to marry a rich husband and in order to attract such a husband, their families used to bind their feet at a very early age and their children used to accept the activity in a very brave manner. Steele’s text even highlights that the role of a mother was to ensure that her children performed well by making sure that her son studied hard to get a good job and their daughters were involved in foot binding to get a rich husband. Read More