{"id":97789,"date":"2011-12-09T12:30:59","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T17:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=97789"},"modified":"2019-03-21T14:26:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T18:26:08","slug":"unraveling-a-brutal-custom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/","title":{"rendered":"Unraveling a brutal custom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"\"

\u201cFor me the question about foot binding has always been \u2018how could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019?\u201d said Laurel Bossen (left), the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bossen and Melissa Brown (right), Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, shared their research on the practice of foot binding.<\/p>

Katherine C. Cohen\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tUnraveling a brutal custom\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\tColleen Walsh\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tFoot binding in China tied to hand weaving, study finds\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\t\t

Gasps echoed through the Radcliffe gymnasium on Wednesday as audience members reacted to the image of a woman\u2019s foot, projected on a large screen at the front of the hall.<\/p>\n

It was a foot in name only. The misshapen mass looked more like a hoof bisected by a crack. The deformity was the result of foot binding, a common practice in much of China until the middle of the last century that involved wrapping the foot of a young girl or woman tightly with a cloth to stunt its growth, explained Laurel Bossen, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That particular type of bound foot was called \u201cthe three-inch golden lotus,\u201d said Bossen. \u201cThat\u2019s the ideal. It gradually broke the girl\u2019s arch \u2026 you can see that the arch is just a crevasse on that foot.\u201d<\/p>\n

While at Harvard, Bossen and Melissa Brown, Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, in collaboration with anthropologist Hill Gates, are writing a book on female labor and foot binding in early 20th century China. Their research is based in part on large-scale surveys in the 1990s done by Gates, and on their own interviews from the past few years with thousands of elderly women from 11 provinces in rural China.<\/p>\n

Their findings dispel several \u201corigin myths\u201d and mistaken assumptions associated with the brutal custom.<\/p>\n

The scholars reject the prevailing theories that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, and a chance for women to marry well. They also reject the widespread notion that such women couldn\u2019t work, and thus contributed little to their families and the larger economy, and the belief that campaigns against the practice were what ultimately put an end to it.<\/p>\n

Instead, their research suggests that the practice was directly linked to the use of young girls and women in the hand-labor force, and that its disappearance coincided with the arrival in China of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n

When they asked women during interviews why they thought their feet were bound, many responded that they were expected to \u201cmarry up economically,\u201d said Brown, a researcher at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota who is interested in historical processes of transformative social and cultural change.<\/p>\n

But she questioned the notion that bound feet were considered more alluring to men and that they could lead to a better marriage, because men weren\u2019t picking their own brides. Their mothers were.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy in the world would a mother want to pick a sexy daughter-in-law?\u201d<\/p>\n

While the women surveyed thought foot binding would lead to a good marriage, the numbers didn\u2019t add up. After a detailed analysis, the researchers found no overall statistically significant data to support the theory that women with bound feet were in more prosperous households after marriage as compared with their birth households.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found, in fact, is that there is not a link,\u201d said Brown, adding, \u201cThe majority show no marital mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why were the feet of 7-year-old girls bound so often if the end result had no impact on their ability to marry above their class?<\/p>\n

The answer involves a financial reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the question about foot binding has always been \u2018How could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019 \u201d? said Bossen, anthropology professor emerita <\/em>at McGill University. \u201cWhat work could they do when they had bound feet?\u201d<\/p>\n

Bossen said the research points to a clear connection between foot binding and hand labor. Mothers needed their daughters\u2019 help to produce both cloth for the family and extra cloth for sale. They needed to keep their \u201cwillful, playful\u201d young daughters at their sides, she said, to have them learn how to spin, wind, twist, and weave fibers they could sell when the crops failed or fell short at harvest.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor girls who are doing handwork for income, the odds are 4.5 to 1 that they will be bound,\u201d said Bossen of the studies they conducted in China\u2019s Yunnan Province.<\/p>\n

\u201cFoot binding can be seen as a way of tying them down, and training them in the handwork, supervising them, and keeping them close at hand. It\u2019s not the only way, but I would argue it became part of the cultural repertory.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as the value of women\u2019s hand labor decreased, so did foot binding.<\/p>\n

The eventual arrival of the Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact on women\u2019s work, as cotton yarn began to be imported and factories eventually replaced the work women did by hand. Citing research that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s, the researchers found that the likelihood that a woman doing commercial handwork would also have bound feet dropped drastically.<\/p>\n

The link between commercial handwork and foot binding is \u201chighly statistically significant,\u201d said Bossen. The arrival of cheaper machines made textiles \u201cundercut income from hand labor and caused foot binding rates to plummet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A research team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is debunking myths surrounding the brutal practice of foot binding young women in China, tying it to handwork and weaving rather than marriage prospects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105622744,"featured_media":97927,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"gz_ga_pageviews":12,"gz_ga_lastupdated":"2021-10-13 05:22","document_color_palette":"crimson","author":"Colleen Walsh","affiliation":"Harvard Staff Writer","_category_override":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1360],"tags":[4500,4501,7150,8013,13530,15239,15252,16942,17857,21304,23534,28635,28665,28687,36115],"gazette-formats":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-97789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-humanities","tag-anthropologist","tag-anthropology","tag-carl-and-lily-pforzheimer-foundation-fellow-at-the-radcliffe-institute-for-advanced-study","tag-china","tag-foot-binding","tag-hand-labor-force","tag-handwork","tag-hill-gates","tag-industrial-revolution","tag-laurel-bossen","tag-melissa-brown","tag-radcliffe","tag-radcliffe-institute-for-advanced-study","tag-radcliffes-frieda-l-miller-fellow","tag-womens-labor"],"yoast_head":"\nUnraveling a brutal custom — Harvard Gazette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A research team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is debunking myths surrounding the brutal practice of foot binding young women in China, tying it to handwork and weaving rather than marriage prospects.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unraveling a brutal custom — Harvard Gazette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A research team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is debunking myths surrounding the brutal practice of foot binding young women in China, tying it to handwork and weaving rather than marriage prospects.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Harvard Gazette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-09T17:30:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-03-21T18:26:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"605\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"403\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"harvardgazette\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"harvardgazette\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/#\/schema\/person\/78d028cf624923e92682268709ffbc4b\"},\"headline\":\"Unraveling a brutal custom\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-12-09T17:30:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-03-21T18:26:08+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/\"},\"wordCount\":896,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/12\/unraveling-a-brutal-custom\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Anthropologist\",\"Anthropology\",\"Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study\",\"China\",\"Foot binding\",\"Hand-labor force\",\"Handwork\",\"Hill Gates\",\"Industrial Revolution\",\"Laurel Bossen\",\"Melissa Brown\",\"Radcliffe\",\"Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study\",\"Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. 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Cohen\/Harvard Staff Photographer","displayDetails":"","displayTitle":"","categoryId":1360,"mediaAlt":"","mediaCaption":"\u201cFor me the question about foot binding has always been \u2018how could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019?\u201d said Laurel Bossen (left), the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bossen and Melissa Brown (right), Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, shared their research on the practice of foot binding.","mediaId":97927,"mediaSize":"full","mediaType":"image","mediaUrl":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg","poster":"","title":"Unraveling a brutal custom","subheading":"Foot binding in China tied to hand weaving, study finds","centeredImage":true,"className":"is-style-full-width-text-below","mediaHeight":403,"mediaWidth":605,"backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">\u201cFor me the question about foot binding has always been \u2018how could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019?\u201d said Laurel Bossen (left), the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bossen and Melissa Brown (right), Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, shared their research on the practice of foot binding.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Katherine C. Cohen\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","innerContent":["<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">\u201cFor me the question about foot binding has always been \u2018how could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019?\u201d said Laurel Bossen (left), the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bossen and Melissa Brown (right), Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, shared their research on the practice of foot binding.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Katherine C. Cohen\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n"],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-full-width-text-below centered-image\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"403\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/footbinding_605.jpg\" width=\"605\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><p class=\"wp-element-caption--caption\">\u201cFor me the question about foot binding has always been \u2018how could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019?\u201d said Laurel Bossen (left), the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bossen and Melissa Brown (right), Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, shared their research on the practice of foot binding.<\/p><p class=\"wp-element-caption--credit\">Katherine C. Cohen\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/arts-humanities\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tUnraveling a brutal custom\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tColleen Walsh\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2011-12-09\">\n\t\t\tDecember 9, 2011\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\t5 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tFoot binding in China tied to hand weaving, study finds\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p>Gasps echoed through the Radcliffe gymnasium on Wednesday as audience members reacted to the image of a woman\u2019s foot, projected on a large screen at the front of the hall.<\/p>\n<p>It was a foot in name only. The misshapen mass looked more like a hoof bisected by a crack. The deformity was the result of foot binding, a common practice in much of China until the middle of the last century that involved wrapping the foot of a young girl or woman tightly with a cloth to stunt its growth, explained Laurel Bossen, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radcliffe.edu\/\">Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That particular type of bound foot was called \u201cthe three-inch golden lotus,\u201d said Bossen. \u201cThat\u2019s the ideal. It gradually broke the girl\u2019s arch \u2026 you can see that the arch is just a crevasse on that foot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While at Harvard, Bossen and Melissa Brown, Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, in collaboration with anthropologist Hill Gates, are writing a book on female labor and foot binding in early 20th century China. Their research is based in part on large-scale surveys in the 1990s done by Gates, and on their own interviews from the past few years with thousands of elderly women from 11 provinces in rural China.<\/p>\n<p>Their findings dispel several \u201corigin myths\u201d and mistaken assumptions associated with the brutal custom.<\/p>\n<p>The scholars reject the prevailing theories that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, and a chance for women to marry well. They also reject the widespread notion that such women couldn\u2019t work, and thus contributed little to their families and the larger economy, and the belief that campaigns against the practice were what ultimately put an end to it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, their research suggests that the practice was directly linked to the use of young girls and women in the hand-labor force, and that its disappearance coincided with the arrival in China of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>When they asked women during interviews why they thought their feet were bound, many responded that they were expected to \u201cmarry up economically,\u201d said Brown, a researcher at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota who is interested in historical processes of transformative social and cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But she questioned the notion that bound feet were considered more alluring to men and that they could lead to a better marriage, because men weren\u2019t picking their own brides. Their mothers were.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy in the world would a mother want to pick a sexy daughter-in-law?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the women surveyed thought foot binding would lead to a good marriage, the numbers didn\u2019t add up. After a detailed analysis, the researchers found no overall statistically significant data to support the theory that women with bound feet were in more prosperous households after marriage as compared with their birth households.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we found, in fact, is that there is not a link,\u201d said Brown, adding, \u201cThe majority show no marital mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why were the feet of 7-year-old girls bound so often if the end result had no impact on their ability to marry above their class?<\/p>\n<p>The answer involves a financial reality.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, the question about foot binding has always been \u2018How could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019 \u201d? said Bossen, anthropology professor <em>emerita <\/em>at McGill University. \u201cWhat work could they do when they had bound feet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bossen said the research points to a clear connection between foot binding and hand labor. Mothers needed their daughters\u2019 help to produce both cloth for the family and extra cloth for sale. They needed to keep their \u201cwillful, playful\u201d young daughters at their sides, she said, to have them learn how to spin, wind, twist, and weave fibers they could sell when the crops failed or fell short at harvest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor girls who are doing handwork for income, the odds are 4.5 to 1 that they will be bound,\u201d said Bossen of the studies they conducted in China\u2019s Yunnan Province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFoot binding can be seen as a way of tying them down, and training them in the handwork, supervising them, and keeping them close at hand. It\u2019s not the only way, but I would argue it became part of the cultural repertory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And as the value of women\u2019s hand labor decreased, so did foot binding.<\/p>\n<p>The eventual arrival of the Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact on women\u2019s work, as cotton yarn began to be imported and factories eventually replaced the work women did by hand. Citing research that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s, the researchers found that the likelihood that a woman doing commercial handwork would also have bound feet dropped drastically.<\/p>\n<p>The link between commercial handwork and foot binding is \u201chighly statistically significant,\u201d said Bossen. The arrival of cheaper machines made textiles \u201cundercut income from hand labor and caused foot binding rates to plummet.\u201d<\/p>\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p>Gasps echoed through the Radcliffe gymnasium on Wednesday as audience members reacted to the image of a woman\u2019s foot, projected on a large screen at the front of the hall.<\/p>\n<p>It was a foot in name only. The misshapen mass looked more like a hoof bisected by a crack. The deformity was the result of foot binding, a common practice in much of China until the middle of the last century that involved wrapping the foot of a young girl or woman tightly with a cloth to stunt its growth, explained Laurel Bossen, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radcliffe.edu\/\">Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That particular type of bound foot was called \u201cthe three-inch golden lotus,\u201d said Bossen. \u201cThat\u2019s the ideal. It gradually broke the girl\u2019s arch \u2026 you can see that the arch is just a crevasse on that foot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While at Harvard, Bossen and Melissa Brown, Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, in collaboration with anthropologist Hill Gates, are writing a book on female labor and foot binding in early 20th century China. Their research is based in part on large-scale surveys in the 1990s done by Gates, and on their own interviews from the past few years with thousands of elderly women from 11 provinces in rural China.<\/p>\n<p>Their findings dispel several \u201corigin myths\u201d and mistaken assumptions associated with the brutal custom.<\/p>\n<p>The scholars reject the prevailing theories that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, and a chance for women to marry well. They also reject the widespread notion that such women couldn\u2019t work, and thus contributed little to their families and the larger economy, and the belief that campaigns against the practice were what ultimately put an end to it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, their research suggests that the practice was directly linked to the use of young girls and women in the hand-labor force, and that its disappearance coincided with the arrival in China of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>When they asked women during interviews why they thought their feet were bound, many responded that they were expected to \u201cmarry up economically,\u201d said Brown, a researcher at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota who is interested in historical processes of transformative social and cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But she questioned the notion that bound feet were considered more alluring to men and that they could lead to a better marriage, because men weren\u2019t picking their own brides. Their mothers were.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy in the world would a mother want to pick a sexy daughter-in-law?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the women surveyed thought foot binding would lead to a good marriage, the numbers didn\u2019t add up. After a detailed analysis, the researchers found no overall statistically significant data to support the theory that women with bound feet were in more prosperous households after marriage as compared with their birth households.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we found, in fact, is that there is not a link,\u201d said Brown, adding, \u201cThe majority show no marital mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why were the feet of 7-year-old girls bound so often if the end result had no impact on their ability to marry above their class?<\/p>\n<p>The answer involves a financial reality.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, the question about foot binding has always been \u2018How could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019 \u201d? said Bossen, anthropology professor <em>emerita <\/em>at McGill University. \u201cWhat work could they do when they had bound feet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bossen said the research points to a clear connection between foot binding and hand labor. Mothers needed their daughters\u2019 help to produce both cloth for the family and extra cloth for sale. They needed to keep their \u201cwillful, playful\u201d young daughters at their sides, she said, to have them learn how to spin, wind, twist, and weave fibers they could sell when the crops failed or fell short at harvest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor girls who are doing handwork for income, the odds are 4.5 to 1 that they will be bound,\u201d said Bossen of the studies they conducted in China\u2019s Yunnan Province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFoot binding can be seen as a way of tying them down, and training them in the handwork, supervising them, and keeping them close at hand. It\u2019s not the only way, but I would argue it became part of the cultural repertory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And as the value of women\u2019s hand labor decreased, so did foot binding.<\/p>\n<p>The eventual arrival of the Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact on women\u2019s work, as cotton yarn began to be imported and factories eventually replaced the work women did by hand. Citing research that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s, the researchers found that the likelihood that a woman doing commercial handwork would also have bound feet dropped drastically.<\/p>\n<p>The link between commercial handwork and foot binding is \u201chighly statistically significant,\u201d said Bossen. The arrival of cheaper machines made textiles \u201cundercut income from hand labor and caused foot binding rates to plummet.\u201d<\/p>\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p>Gasps echoed through the Radcliffe gymnasium on Wednesday as audience members reacted to the image of a woman\u2019s foot, projected on a large screen at the front of the hall.<\/p>\n<p>It was a foot in name only. The misshapen mass looked more like a hoof bisected by a crack. The deformity was the result of foot binding, a common practice in much of China until the middle of the last century that involved wrapping the foot of a young girl or woman tightly with a cloth to stunt its growth, explained Laurel Bossen, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radcliffe.edu\/\">Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That particular type of bound foot was called \u201cthe three-inch golden lotus,\u201d said Bossen. \u201cThat\u2019s the ideal. It gradually broke the girl\u2019s arch \u2026 you can see that the arch is just a crevasse on that foot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While at Harvard, Bossen and Melissa Brown, Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, in collaboration with anthropologist Hill Gates, are writing a book on female labor and foot binding in early 20th century China. Their research is based in part on large-scale surveys in the 1990s done by Gates, and on their own interviews from the past few years with thousands of elderly women from 11 provinces in rural China.<\/p>\n<p>Their findings dispel several \u201corigin myths\u201d and mistaken assumptions associated with the brutal custom.<\/p>\n<p>The scholars reject the prevailing theories that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, and a chance for women to marry well. They also reject the widespread notion that such women couldn\u2019t work, and thus contributed little to their families and the larger economy, and the belief that campaigns against the practice were what ultimately put an end to it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, their research suggests that the practice was directly linked to the use of young girls and women in the hand-labor force, and that its disappearance coincided with the arrival in China of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>When they asked women during interviews why they thought their feet were bound, many responded that they were expected to \u201cmarry up economically,\u201d said Brown, a researcher at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota who is interested in historical processes of transformative social and cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But she questioned the notion that bound feet were considered more alluring to men and that they could lead to a better marriage, because men weren\u2019t picking their own brides. Their mothers were.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy in the world would a mother want to pick a sexy daughter-in-law?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the women surveyed thought foot binding would lead to a good marriage, the numbers didn\u2019t add up. After a detailed analysis, the researchers found no overall statistically significant data to support the theory that women with bound feet were in more prosperous households after marriage as compared with their birth households.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we found, in fact, is that there is not a link,\u201d said Brown, adding, \u201cThe majority show no marital mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why were the feet of 7-year-old girls bound so often if the end result had no impact on their ability to marry above their class?<\/p>\n<p>The answer involves a financial reality.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, the question about foot binding has always been \u2018How could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019 \u201d? said Bossen, anthropology professor <em>emerita <\/em>at McGill University. \u201cWhat work could they do when they had bound feet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bossen said the research points to a clear connection between foot binding and hand labor. Mothers needed their daughters\u2019 help to produce both cloth for the family and extra cloth for sale. They needed to keep their \u201cwillful, playful\u201d young daughters at their sides, she said, to have them learn how to spin, wind, twist, and weave fibers they could sell when the crops failed or fell short at harvest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor girls who are doing handwork for income, the odds are 4.5 to 1 that they will be bound,\u201d said Bossen of the studies they conducted in China\u2019s Yunnan Province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFoot binding can be seen as a way of tying them down, and training them in the handwork, supervising them, and keeping them close at hand. It\u2019s not the only way, but I would argue it became part of the cultural repertory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And as the value of women\u2019s hand labor decreased, so did foot binding.<\/p>\n<p>The eventual arrival of the Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact on women\u2019s work, as cotton yarn began to be imported and factories eventually replaced the work women did by hand. Citing research that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s, the researchers found that the likelihood that a woman doing commercial handwork would also have bound feet dropped drastically.<\/p>\n<p>The link between commercial handwork and foot binding is \u201chighly statistically significant,\u201d said Bossen. The arrival of cheaper machines made textiles \u201cundercut income from hand labor and caused foot binding rates to plummet.\u201d<\/p>\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p>Gasps echoed through the Radcliffe gymnasium on Wednesday as audience members reacted to the image of a woman\u2019s foot, projected on a large screen at the front of the hall.<\/p>\n<p>It was a foot in name only. The misshapen mass looked more like a hoof bisected by a crack. The deformity was the result of foot binding, a common practice in much of China until the middle of the last century that involved wrapping the foot of a young girl or woman tightly with a cloth to stunt its growth, explained Laurel Bossen, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radcliffe.edu\/\">Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That particular type of bound foot was called \u201cthe three-inch golden lotus,\u201d said Bossen. \u201cThat\u2019s the ideal. It gradually broke the girl\u2019s arch \u2026 you can see that the arch is just a crevasse on that foot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While at Harvard, Bossen and Melissa Brown, Radcliffe\u2019s Frieda L. Miller Fellow, in collaboration with anthropologist Hill Gates, are writing a book on female labor and foot binding in early 20th century China. Their research is based in part on large-scale surveys in the 1990s done by Gates, and on their own interviews from the past few years with thousands of elderly women from 11 provinces in rural China.<\/p>\n<p>Their findings dispel several \u201corigin myths\u201d and mistaken assumptions associated with the brutal custom.<\/p>\n<p>The scholars reject the prevailing theories that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, and a chance for women to marry well. They also reject the widespread notion that such women couldn\u2019t work, and thus contributed little to their families and the larger economy, and the belief that campaigns against the practice were what ultimately put an end to it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, their research suggests that the practice was directly linked to the use of young girls and women in the hand-labor force, and that its disappearance coincided with the arrival in China of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>When they asked women during interviews why they thought their feet were bound, many responded that they were expected to \u201cmarry up economically,\u201d said Brown, a researcher at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota who is interested in historical processes of transformative social and cultural change.<\/p>\n<p>But she questioned the notion that bound feet were considered more alluring to men and that they could lead to a better marriage, because men weren\u2019t picking their own brides. Their mothers were.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy in the world would a mother want to pick a sexy daughter-in-law?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the women surveyed thought foot binding would lead to a good marriage, the numbers didn\u2019t add up. After a detailed analysis, the researchers found no overall statistically significant data to support the theory that women with bound feet were in more prosperous households after marriage as compared with their birth households.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we found, in fact, is that there is not a link,\u201d said Brown, adding, \u201cThe majority show no marital mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why were the feet of 7-year-old girls bound so often if the end result had no impact on their ability to marry above their class?<\/p>\n<p>The answer involves a financial reality.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, the question about foot binding has always been \u2018How could rural families afford to lose women\u2019s labor\u2019 \u201d? said Bossen, anthropology professor <em>emerita <\/em>at McGill University. \u201cWhat work could they do when they had bound feet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bossen said the research points to a clear connection between foot binding and hand labor. Mothers needed their daughters\u2019 help to produce both cloth for the family and extra cloth for sale. They needed to keep their \u201cwillful, playful\u201d young daughters at their sides, she said, to have them learn how to spin, wind, twist, and weave fibers they could sell when the crops failed or fell short at harvest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor girls who are doing handwork for income, the odds are 4.5 to 1 that they will be bound,\u201d said Bossen of the studies they conducted in China\u2019s Yunnan Province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFoot binding can be seen as a way of tying them down, and training them in the handwork, supervising them, and keeping them close at hand. It\u2019s not the only way, but I would argue it became part of the cultural repertory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And as the value of women\u2019s hand labor decreased, so did foot binding.<\/p>\n<p>The eventual arrival of the Industrial Revolution had a dramatic impact on women\u2019s work, as cotton yarn began to be imported and factories eventually replaced the work women did by hand. Citing research that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s, the researchers found that the likelihood that a woman doing commercial handwork would also have bound feet dropped drastically.<\/p>\n<p>The link between commercial handwork and foot binding is \u201chighly statistically significant,\u201d said Bossen. The arrival of cheaper machines made textiles \u201cundercut income from hand labor and caused foot binding rates to plummet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4004,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2009\/04\/harvard-and-radcliffe-win-guggenheim-fellowships\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":0},"title":"Harvard and Radcliffe win Guggenheim Fellowships","author":"harvardgazette","date":"April 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced its 2009-10 fellowship awardees on April 8. Five Harvard faculty members were named Guggenheim recipients, as well as one fellow from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The winners include: Peter Galison, Pellegrino University Professor; Ingrid Monson, the Quincy Jones Professor of African-American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34743,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2010\/01\/mathematician-gains-dual-appointments\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":1},"title":"Mathematician gains dual appointments","author":"harvardgazette","date":"January 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sophie Morel, a young mathematician whose research involves algebraic geometry, representation theory, and number theory, is named professor of mathematics in Harvard\u2019s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). She also is named to the Radcliffe Alumnae Professorship.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/morel_060_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/morel_060_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/morel_060_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":135603,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/04\/engaging-in-a-new-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":2},"title":"Engaging in a new community","author":"harvardgazette","date":"April 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The innovative international scholar Tamar Herzog has been appointed the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs in Harvard University\u2019s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She also will become the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/herzog_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/herzog_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/herzog_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":80640,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/04\/an-interim-dean-for-radcliffe\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":3},"title":"An interim dean for Radcliffe","author":"harvardgazette","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"President Drew Faust names Lizabeth Cohen as interim dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The current dean, Barbara J. Grosz, will step down at the end of this academic year.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/042811_cohen_015_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/042811_cohen_015_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/042811_cohen_015_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":69291,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2001\/10\/china-scholar-speaks-at-radcliffe\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":4},"title":"China scholar speaks at Radcliffe","author":"gazetteimport","date":"October 18, 2001","format":false,"excerpt":"Chinese historian Jonathan D. Spence will illuminate the life of the mind in 17th century China when he speaks as part of the Deans Lecture Series sponsored by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The lecture is free and open to the public.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":69328,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2001\/10\/vichniac-is-director-of-radcliffe-fellowship-program\/","url_meta":{"origin":97789,"position":5},"title":"Vichniac is director of Radcliffe Fellowship Program","author":"gazetteimport","date":"October 25, 2001","format":false,"excerpt":"Judith Vichniac, the former director of studies for the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies and a senior lecturer in Harvard College since 1989, has been appointed the director of the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She began her duties in September.","rel":"","context":"In "Campus & Community"","block_context":{"text":"Campus & Community","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/campus-community\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105622744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269012,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97789\/revisions\/269012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97789"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gazette-formats?post=97789"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=97789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}