Rethinking Family Patriarchy and Women's Positions in Presocialist China

Grounded in the patrilineal family system in presocialist China, this study explores the intersection between generation and gender dimensions of family patriarchy in influencing marital power relations. Data come from the life stories of 80 elderly married individuals, collected during the 2000-2001 period in the city of Beijing. Patterns of male dominance in marital relations were found to be incomplete, inconsistent, and even countervailing in the presence of generation patriarchy. Consequently, women's experience with family patriarchy was mixed over the life course. They were particularly disadvantaged as daughters-in-law, but their lives were improved as they became fully integrated into the patrilineal system through reproduction and their husband's growing reliance on their contributions to family continuity. Key Words: cross-cultural, gender, in-laws, intergenerational relations, intersectionality, power. In studies of family patriarchy in presocialist China (prior to 1950), it is well established that there existed at least two dimensions of authority in multigenerational households: one was based on gender and the other on seniority (Fei, 1998; Hsu, 1971; Yang, 1945). The former was primarily concerned with husband-wife relations and the latter with the parent-child hierarchy. The presence of seniority-based patriarchy had not only complicated women's lives but also carries strong implications for gender studies and research on family power. A growing body of research has noted women's increased authority as they rose from daughters-in-law to mothers and mothers-in-law (Ebrey, 1 99 1 ; Hsiung, 2005 ; Wolf, 1972). Less known, though, is the relation of senior women's authority to China's twodimensional patriarchal system and, more broadly, the impact of the seniority-based power on gender relations characterized by women's subordination to men. Although, like elsewhere, women's subordination has been widely found in Chinese history (Chen, 1998; Johnson, 1983; Stacey, 1983), studies have also shown that such patterns were neither uniform nor immutable (Barlow, 1994). In fact, the male-dominated gender order is always contested in multiple structural and institutional contexts, according to more broadly based research (Baca Zinn, 1994; Connell, 2002; Scott, 1988). Here it begs the following questions: In which ways did the presence of senior women's authority challenge gender-based patriarchy among junior couples (i.e., those of the younger generation) in the household? More generally, how would the presence of intergenerational domination influence gender relations within marriages of junior couples? To launch a successful investigation of the inner working of seniority- and gender-based patriarchal orders, it is imperative to situate both of them in the Chinese patrilineal family system, one in which family property and names followed the male line of descent. As corporatelike economic units, Chinese patrilineal families not only served to perpetuate both dimensions of patriarchy but also revealed gendering processes somewhat different from male dominance models observed in the industrial West (e.g., Blood & Wolfe, 1 960). Scanty research has been channeled in this direction. I examined the intersection of generation and gender dimensions of patriarchy within multigenerational households, that is, the ways in which generation and gender power structures operated simultaneously and interactively in power formation and change process. I did so by comparing spousal power relations of junior couples both in the presence and the absence of parental domination throughout their life cycles. I argue that, although both dimensions of authority were intended to strengthen the male lineage, their impacts on women and men were not always additive (e.g., double jeopardy for women and double privileges for men); instead, they were often fractured, contradictory, and sometimes even countervailing. …