Foot Binding Research Paper

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Autumn Flickinger
Chinese History 415
Kishida
11-4-2019
Foot Binding: A Labour & Economic Crutch in Pre-Industrial China
An Introduction to Foot Binding
In the past, the enfeebling practice of foot binding affected millions of Chinese women
and girls. A part of the custom, young girls were obligated to have their feet compressed tightly
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with silk binding cloth as a way of deforming the feet to make them have a smaller appearance;
having petite feet became a norm and was expected in girls if they were to marry respectable
suitors. This process would eventually lead to the breaking and crushing of the bones in the feet
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and would take years for it to complete. When the feet were in their final form, the four toes
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except for the big toe would be bent and embedded into the sole of the foot and the tendon in the
arch of the foot would be broken. In doing this, the foot would be narrowed to a point, giving it
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the shape of a lotus flower, which is where the name “lotus feet” came from. When political
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change required women to remove their bindings and release their feet, it was excruciatingly
painful and required rebinding; the bone structure of the feet had been completely destroyed and
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Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. 2.
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Edward, Debi. Banned Practice of Foot Binding Blighting China's Oldest Women. ITV News, January 3,
2019. https://youtu.be/NuuIoJGPjBA?t=97.
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2
Bossen, Laurel, Wang Xurui, Melissa J. Brown, and Hill Gates. "Feet and Fabrication: Footbinding and
Early Twentieth-Century Rural Women's Labor in Shaanxi." Modern China 37, no. 4 (2011): 347-83.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23053328. 348.
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Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. Bound Feet, Young Hands: Tracking the Demise of Footbinding in Village
China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. 1.

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irreversibly damaged. With the amount of damage foot binding caused, women and girls were
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unable to walk, run, or balance themselves. This gradually growing trend caused lifelong
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immobility and labour hardship. With women forced to sit and stay inside, producing the most
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valuable resources was one of the main sources of income for China, making it an economic
source of stability in labour and income before the Chinese Industrialization.
Foot Binding Origins
There are many sources debating the reasons behind foot binding, why it was started, and
why it lasted so long. The confidence in the origin of foot binding is very minimal, but it is said
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for foot binding to have started around 937-975 CE, during the Tang dynasty. Turkic court
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dancers were mentioned by Emperor Li Yu and were specifically recognized for having small
feet and “bow-shoes”, which was seen as a striking sign of beauty. With this, elite women in
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the empire started binding their feet and that eventually led to the spread of foot binding in the
Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) in most provinces of China as a sign of status. In the era of the
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Song dynasty, a woman's most important job was birthing sons. The immobility caused by foot
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binding pulled women away from civic responsibilities, which was seen as more socially
acceptable by men; women would not be as politically involved as men and dedicate their time to
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“Foot-Binding.” ReadWorks. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://www.readworks.org/article/Foot-Binding/dacbe2e9-c28e-435b-850c-15a32eb20eb1. 2.
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Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. Bound Feet, Young Hands: Tracking the Demise of Footbinding in
Village China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017.
11
Cartwright, Mark. “Foot-Binding.” Ancient History Encyclopedia.
10
Cartwright, Mark. “Foot-Binding.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia,
November 7, 2019. https://www.ancient.eu/Foot-Binding/.
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Bossen, Laurel, Wang Xurui, Melissa J. Brown, and Hill Gates. 348.
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housekeeping and child care. The popularity in foot binding really progressed with the push in
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Confucianism, the hierarchical system of subservience.15
Confucianism & Women: A Woman’s Place in a Confucianist’s Society
Confucian ideals in the era of foot binding were extremely important. Gender was not
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only a biological piece of someone’s body at this time, but it was also the key determinator in
what kind of life someone was going to experience. A young Chinese girl’s bound feet was
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more than the physical binding, it was the foundation of the social life they would live. The
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enforcement of bound feet was a rule of discipline for young girls. Girls with unbound feet
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were not respected by their families, members of their communities, and had limited marriage
prospects. Confucian thought forced women and girls to be virtuous and industrious while
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bending to the rules of men in society; men in China were seen as the core of every family.21
Confucianism helped shape the structure of families and a woman’s place in one. Confucian
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rules stressed the thought that there should be role segregation in every home, inner and outer;
women were to remain on the inner section of the house. Women were not to take part in public
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Ebrey, Patricia. “Women in Traditional China.”
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Ebrey, Patricia. “Women in Traditional China.” Asia Society. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://asiasociety.org/education/women-traditional-china.
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“Foot-Binding.” ReadWorks. 3.
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Blake, C. Fred. 680.
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Blake, C. Fred. “Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor.”
Chicago Journals. The University of Chicago Press. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bed0/2d70344804f0ed91996b604390fedb7daf3e.pdf. 676.
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matters and were to tend to silkworms and weaving. The head of the family was the oldest
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male, father or husband, and if that male were to die, the son would take over and the woman in
the house would submit to their son. Foot binding was a fundamental piece of the family
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system that placed them directly in the system of economic production. With the push for
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women staying in the house, the push for economic commodities was also in the mix.27
The Expectations of Girls & Women
The attraction of small feet was based on size. Bound feet at the size of three inches were
preferred by men as the most suitable brides, and were known as “golden lotuses”. Feet that
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were four inches, “silver lotuses”, were also esteemed, but bound feet five inches or longer were
known as “iron lotuses” and were usually turned down in marriage. Girls were told often that
having their feet tightly bound would ensure marriage and a good life in their future. This was
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also to enhance the potential consequence, a wife with unbound feet is not a wife for anyone’s
son. This promoted and mentally trained girls to deal with bound feet as a lower body
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modification that would prepare them for a future life as a wife and as a daughter-in-law.31
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Foreman, Amanda. “Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium.” Smithsonian.com.
Smithsonian Institution, February 1, 2015.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-footbinding-persisted-china-millennium-180953971/.
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Meanwhile, labouring for their family would train them in mind and hands so they could not
only provide for their future family, but for their current household.32
Bound Feet & Daily Labour
The imperial aphorism, “men plow, women weave” stood around for hundreds of years
and really laid the foundation of expectations for women and girls cloth production in
pre-industrialized China. Commodity items like silk, cotton, and hemp played a critical part in
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China. Although the maxim “men plow, women weave” was an expectation based on gender,
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both jobs eventually were to fall on the backs of women. Young boys did work in the family
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until a certain age where they could no longer fulfill certain home needs; it is believed girls feet
were bound at a young age to handicap them and discourage play and promote a life of work.36
With painful and freshly bound feet, children remained seated with no option but to obey tasks
that required only the use of hands; these tasks were for more than production of household use,
but for exchange and income as well. Almost all households had a wooden loom. Weavers
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were strictly dependent on the use of female spinners who could start at a young age. Spinning
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was an everyday objective for old women and young girls who would spin around four ounces of
yarn a day. In one day, nine inch wide and 18 to 20 feet long course yarn would be produced on
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Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. Bound Feet, Young Hands: 8.
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one loom on average. The tasks were to make ropes, mats, straw hats, sacks, nets, and weaved
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bamboo baskets, and utensils. These things were in high demand and could be exchanged for
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cash, grain, oil, or other raw materials, like cotton. Many of these handcrafted items were basic
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for girls and women who would be more experienced with looming would spin for seasonal
clothing, bedding, and cloth shoes.44
Mother’s Reasons Behind Foot Binding
In an excerpt from When I Was a Girl in China by Joseph Rupp, a fourteen year old girl,
Li Xiu-ying, wrote a letter, explaining the reason her mother gave her for binding her feet:
The day my mother started binding my feet, she told me that it had to be done in order for
me to find a husband. I knew that already because every woman I ever saw had bound
feet. Before the Communists came I never even heard of a woman not having bound feet.
Mother also explained to me that the smaller a girl’s feet are, the better a husband she will
get. Ideally, you want the feet to be very short – at most three inches – and very narrow.45
Most times, mother’s reasons behind binding the feet of their daughters would be
excluded because revealing the true motives behind a socially accepted practice would be
uncomfortable. Foot binding was more often than not a mother’s choice and responsibility to
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bind their daughter’s feet unless the mother died before the child reached the age of binding:
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Rupp, Joseph. “Li Xiu-Ying.” In When I Was a Girl in China, n.a., n.d.
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between the ages of 5 and 9 years old. Girls who were expected to be married young were often
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demanded by the mother of the son to have their feet bound or required binding the girl’s feet
themselves. Often, girls' feet were bound young to discourage field work with men and
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promote aid in the household to ease the workload of the mothers. This would place control
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over the young girl’s labour in the household and then the bodily harm it caused to the girl could
shift the blame from the mother in the household to their potential mother-in-law who would
punish them if they had unbound feet. Population also played a big part in a mother’s role in
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binding the feet of her daughter. With demanding daily tasks women were required to endure,
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they experienced recurrent pregnancies, miscarriages, hemorrhages, and uterine prolapses. The
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average number of births per woman was around six; the high birth rate was set to compensate
for the high amount of infant mortalities. Mothers who even had a single child faced struggles
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and the balance between their workload and motherhood; from feeding and supervising a child to
dutiful tasks like grabbing water, cooking food, and weaving, children were extremely distracting
and disruptive to work productivity. The imbalance between these two things led to strong
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motivation in mothers to constrain their children; binding the feet and putting them to work,
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making work more efficient and motherhood an easier burden to bear. These mothers would
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then have more salable items for an increase in potential profit and trade.56
Studies on Foot Binding and Production
Cotton and handmade fabrics were the main commercial products and main source of
income at the time. A chart in the book Feet and Fabrication: Footbinding and Early
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Twentieth-Century Rural Women's Labor presented a chart with the occupations in China in
1934. Based on the total population, the correlation between women with bound feet and the
sustainability of the economy is present; farming (26%), commerce (5%), soldiers (3%), industry
(1%), students (7%), elderly/disabled (27%), spinning and weaving (30%). Spinning and
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weaving was the occupation left for women, and at that time, it was still the biggest occupation
for the population, meaning cotton and handspun goods were still providing profit. In a
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research study done by Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates, they found there was a direct tie between
foot binding and female labour in China; foot binding was used for salable items before the
industrialization of China, so with industrialization moving into China, there was a decrease of
foot binding in rural areas. Furthermore, when the income sustainability from women’s
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handcrafted materials declined, so did the need to bind a girl's feet at the designated age of
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binding. When handcrafting raw materials produced no income, traditional female handcrafts
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were still taught, but were not enough to incentivize foot binding in young girls.62
Concluding Foot Binding & Textile Labour
Many scholars say that foot binding was a social ploy at increasing attraction in women
that would lead to marriage. Analysis of young girls with bound feet was the significant factor
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behind why others think it had more to do with labour and income. There was a dismissal of
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attention to the economic stance women had in China’s society because the generalizations about
foot binding were beauty related. Foot binding was a practice that originally started out with
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elite women, but spread quickly to remote villages, where children and women were crafting
handmade items. Lack of interaction with women in remote locations led to scholars writing
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specifically about elite women with bound feet. With this, women in rural areas were not
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focused on and so their handcrafting abilities were never accounted for when it came to the binds
on their feet. Through intensive examination of labour in remote areas, it shows the amount of
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reliance China had on the use of family systems. Family systems clearly indicated a strong
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push in girl’s labour as a backing to household sustainability. Though people assumed that foot
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binding was a patriarchal move in society, it always started off with the family first; mothers
wrapping their daughter’s feet at binding age. The older women in the household were always
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in charge of training the spinners and weavers with bound feet, girls and women played a direct
role in sustaining household textile production and girls were the main face of income in each
household. With the industrialization of China progressing gradually, a decrease in footbinding
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was directly linked; through this, the myths that foot binding was just another beauty standard or
sexual fantasy or symbol of status can be put to rest.
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Bibliography
Blake, C. Fred. “Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor.”
Chicago Journals. The University of Chicago Press. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bed0/2d70344804f0ed91996b604390fedb7daf3e.pdf.
Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. Bound Feet, Young Hands: Tracking the Demise of Footbinding
in Village China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017.
Cartwright, Mark. “Foot-Binding.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History
Encyclopedia, November 7, 2019. https://www.ancient.eu/Foot-Binding/.
Ebrey, Patricia. “Women in Traditional China.” Asia Society. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://asiasociety.org/education/women-traditional-china.
Edward, Debi. Banned Practice of Foot Binding Blighting China's Oldest Women. ITV News,
January 3, 2019. https://youtu.be/NuuIoJGPjBA?t=97.
“Foot-Binding.” ReadWorks. ReadWorks. Accessed October 31, 2019.
https://www.readworks.org/article/Foot-Binding/dacbe2e9-c28e-435b-850c-15a32eb20e.
Foreman, Amanda. “Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium.” Smithsonian.com.
Smithsonian Institution, February 1, 2015.
Rupp, Joseph. “Li Xiu-Ying.” In When I Was a Girl in China, n.a., n.d.

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