Link Between the Yin-Yang Theory and Gender Roles During the Imperial Dynasty Period in China

During the time when the imperial dynasties existed on the continent of China as Qin Shi Huang established the Qin dynasty, emperor and central government agencies constructed and refined a system where contains selected ideas that they wanted to root in the mind of the general public so that these people can apply them in a certain way, which was helpful to maintain social stability. One of these ideas is the knowledge about how gender roles should be understood and determined. Yin-yang theory, describing how contrary forces are interdependent of each other, is often regarded as one of the important concepts that were selected to aid people learning the idea of gender roles. However, the repressive practice on women at that time might be traced back to the influence from the philosophical notions of yin-yang theory.

This paper focuses on examining whether or not Yin-yang theory actually facilitated the understanding of gender roles that led to the gender discrimination at that time. Whereas Zhang perceives yin-yang theory as a philosophic foundation that induced people in that period to perceived how gender roles should be put into practice in a biased way, Rosenlee perceives yin-yang theory as the tool for these people to understand gender roles without any trend toward gender discrimination.

Zhang Xianglong suggests that the interpretation of gender roles under the concept of yin-yang theory would provide people an inclination toward unfairly judging gender roles in his book “Ancient Chinese Science and phenomenology.” Yin-yang theory is one of the most essential dynamics in how understanding the universe and social structure throughout the time when the dynasties had no restrict study on natural science. For example, the existence of light and dark could be explained by yin-yang theory because these two fundamental elements in nature form a dynamic system which is similar to the system where yin and yang, two opposite forces, interconnect with each other (Feuchtwang 2016:150-151). Light is usually represented by Yang because ancient Chinese thinkers thought it is the positive principle of the world.

By contrast, dark is usually considered as Yin because of its opposition to light. These ideas defined how the literature expressed the image related to light and dark. Because yang means positive, the light was often presented as a superior power although two elements have opposite but equal qualities. Similarly, the concepts of gender have long been influenced and shaped by Chinese thinkers’ philosophic thought on Yin-yang theory so that the idea that yang represents the sun principle and yin represents the dark principles became the basic model for the formation of male and female characters.

While yang and yin do not exclusively have the definition as two different sexualities and mean to the differences on gender roles, yin often references as the female traits and yang as the male traits within a given context, in terms of their general link to one another. The idea of gender roles was constructed and enriched by connecting it with philosophic thought derived from yin-yang theory. This means how men and women should define their roles and act in the community strongly connotes the ideas of yin and yang. For instance, in traditional Chinese society under the imperial influence, the characteristics such as activity and openness are a good presentation of the accepted masculine principles at that time (Zhang 2002:5).

Feminine principles are apparently opposite to masculine principles so that the characteristics such as passivity and concealment were included in the general rules of how women should interact in society. Therefore, men were guaranteed with leadership, which is apparently shown in the ancient records about daily life, because men have the characteristics that represent yang. This helped them have roles be superior to women no matter in the family or in society. Relatively, most women should stay at home without opportunities to get considerable education and a certain social position. Literature became almost inaccessible to women, which means women could only understand how gender roles actually work through the suggestion from their maternal home but also force women to take all the responsibility related to domestic life.

This further led to the situation that women, a representation of Yin, had somehow been doomed to be inferior in subconsciousness, and prejudice against women in ancient Chinese culture is not totally universal but existing widely. No matter ancient Chinese literature, such as “Zhouyi” and “Yijing”, and documents describing the gender roles have a clear indication of how gender roles were realized under the concepts of yin-yang theory ((Zhang 2002). Yin-yang theory defined the range of attitudes and behaviors that are generally considered acceptable at that time, but not compatible in the nowadays perspectives.

Rosenlee, however, argues that the analogy between yin–yang system and men-women system was complementary, which would help people at that time understand gender roles under a cross-interact context instead of simple hierarchy. Although in its first part, the book offers the evidence that yin-yang theory leads to the gender system that has women’s oppression, the book later challenges the perception that several concepts such as yin-yang theory and nei-wai convention are opposite to the feminism in ancient China following Black’s discussion. The basic polarity in yin-yang theory is not that should be responsible for the problems related to gender roles because not only yin and yang were not primarily mean “feminine” and “masculine”, but also yin-yang theory was not centered on gender in ancient China (Black 1989: 95).

Yin-yang theory was primarily utilized to interpret the coherent fabric of nature and mind, not the social structures and roles (Rosenlee 2006: 63–64). For example, texts in the ancient Chinese divination text “Classic of Changes” show the fact that the yin–yang polarity was not used to delineate gender. Also, not until the middle of Western Han dynasty did yin-yang start to be analogized with man-woman under the cosmology built by Dong Zhongshu, but gender hierarchy embedded in social lives already existed since Qin dynasty, the dynasty replaced by Western Han. What’s more, yin-yang theory was too abstract for the emperor and central government agencies to let practically relevant to build up the system of gender roles for the general public (Rosenlee 2006). Emperor and central government agencies were more likely to make a much simpler connection between the idea of gender roles and another concept to let the general public understand at the time when the literacy rate of dynasty was relatively low compared to that of the nowadays society.

The authors of two sources both use ancient Chinese literature to support their argument on the actual effect of yin-yang theory on the discriminated understanding of gender roles. Also, they take the arguments and conclusions from other scholars as reference to make their assumption much stronger. However, they draw different conclusion for the issue about whether yin-yang theory actually led to the issue related to gender bias with detailed analysis. Zhang brings mostly the philosopher’s eye to the issue, yet Rosenlee’ s approach is primarily to focus on interpretation of the issue with historian perspective.

Zhang focuses on the derivative meaning of yin-yang in the imperial China and uses it to connect with historical facts and literatures implying the idea he supports. Rosenlee, on the other hand, calls her conclusions with the evidence that primary meaning of yin-yang and its application were not pointing to gender in ancient China. She, in addition, points out the sequence of some events to prove that the presence of yang and yin did not affect the gender binary of man and woman and were not synonymous with gender roles for two sexualities.