The Neo-Confucian movement of the Song dynasty (960-1279) articulated a vision of social order founded on a profound dismantling of the robust economic rights community exercised by women. The ambitious reforms imagined by prominent Neo-Confucian thinkers and officials pursued these goals but inadvertently exposed the resilience of the legal and social practices they sought to erase. In its attempt to forge an ideal female subject devoid of economic agency, the movement laid bare its own fundamental instabilities, revealing acute tension between ideological aspiration and social reality.
The philosophical core of the Neo-Confucian agenda, championed by figures like Zhu Xi (1130-1200), was the revival of a rigid patrilineal structure centred on termed the “descent line system.”1 This system demanded that “ancestral property must as a rule be divided only among sons, not given to daughters,” and that women’s control of personal assets be severely constrained to prevent them from “undermining the authority of the household head” and siphoning assets away from the patriline.2 Within this framework, a woman’s control of personal assets was perceived as profoundly subversive because property represented lineage continuity rather than individual wealth. The ideological ideal was thus a woman subjugated entirely to male relatives, legally incapable of owning property independent of her husband’s patriline.
This prescriptive vision clashed decisively with the established legal and customary landscape of the Song. Tang and Song law explicitly recognised a wife’s dowry and other personal property as “conceptually distinct from that of her husband,” granting her the right to remove this property upon divorce or widowhood.3 Furthermore, the legal principle of “bereft households” provided that orphaned daughters without brothers could inherit substantial portions of family estates, in some cases up to half their father’s share of undivided family property4 . Song judicial practice consistently protected women’s property rights in inheritance disputes and dowry claims, reflecting a legal culture that viewed female economic agency as legitimate rather than aberrant. The Song state itself had fiscal motivations to maintain these practices, as dowries facilitated marriage alliances among the elite and generated tax revenue from property transfers.
The contradiction between Neo-Confucian ideology and actual practice became particularly acute regarding widow remarriage and property retention. Zhu Xi and other prominent Neo-Confucians vigorously opposed widow remarriage, promoting instead a “cult of chastity” that idealised lifelong fidelity to deceased husbands5 . Neo-Confucians criticised the practice of women keeping their dowries and returning to their natal families after widowhood, viewing this as a dangerous assertion of female autonomy. Yet Song legal codes and social practice told a different story. Women routinely drew upon their dowries to support themselves as widows or to finance remarriages, and legal documents record widows successfully defending their property rights against male relatives who sought to appropriate their assets6 .
Lacking the immediate power to rewrite statute law during the Song, Neo-Confucian elites turned to the tools of social and moral suasion. A primary instrument was the compilation of ritual manuals, most notably Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, which sought to “instruct and admonish the family” by embedding Neo-Confucian values into quotidian life7 . These texts prescribed elaborate patrilineal ceremonies that excluded women from positions of ritual authority, granted males exclusive control over ancestral worship, and emphasised female subordination within the household hierarchy.
Understanding this contradiction requires moving beyond simplistic narratives of inexorable patriarchal domination. Instead, we must recognise that ideological movements, even those endorsed by state orthodoxy, operate within complex social contexts where legal precedent, economic incentives, and customary practice create substantial barriers to radical transformation. The role that Song women’s property rights played in elite marriage strategies, household economics, and state fiscal policy demonstrates that gender relations cannot be reduced to ideological prescription alone. The tragedy lies not in the inevitability of patriarchal victory but in recognising how persistent ideological campaigns eventually succeeded in constructing legal disabilities that transformed women from property holders into dependents.
- Birge, Bettine, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960-1368), (New York, 2002), 143. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Ibid, 41 and 52 [↩]
- Ibid, 52 [↩]
- Ibid, 146 [↩]
- Ibid, 147 [↩]
- Minzhen, ‘Song Dynasty Family Rituals and the Reconstruction of Confucian Daily Life’, Journal of Chinese Humanities, 2023 (9:3), 304 [↩]