The Family Status Of Female Of A Tujia Minority Village

Viewing from"gender"of feminist anthropology, and utilizing methods of document analysis, case interview and fieldwork, this thesis with the clue of female life cycle conducts a deep empirical study to the female family status in Dongjia Village, a typical Tujia minority village, of Hefeng County in Enshi Tujia and Miao Minority Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province. To a certain degree, this study enriches the contents of feminist anthropology, meanwhile offering a new perspective and extending new academic activities.In light of realities, the author of this thesis divides the female life cycle of Dongjia Village into five phases: childhood (aged 0-6), teenage (aged 7-15), youth age (aged 16-29), middle age (aged 30-55) and old age (aged over 56). In the meantime, since marriage is the most crucial turn point in individual role changeover, this thesis also divides these five phases into two other phases of pre-marriage and post-marriage (i.e. pre-marriage includes childhood, teenage and the earlier period of youth age, and post-marriage includes the later period of youth age,middle age and old age). Threaded by this, this thesis respectively narrates the changeover of female role and family status in different phases. Based on ethnography, this thesis specially emphasizes the following study perspectives: comparison between male and female, comparison between history and present.The study have shown that the changeover of Tujia female family status in Dongjia Village is reflected on following two aspects: in the individual aspect, Dongjia females'family status change with the time periodically in their whole life course; in the group aspect, the contemporary Dongjia females'family status has been greatly improved compared with the past. The causes of this changeover can be analyzed from social, family and individual aspects. Which includes four reasons. Firstly, the country's policies have laid a solid foundation for the advancement of females'status. Secondly, the social gender system which is harmonious and equal creates fine conditions for improving female status. Thirdly, the family status of females is positively correlated to personal and family background of women before marriage, the degree of supports from relatives of parental home, housekeeping competence, the size of the economic contribution to the family, marital relations and the mode of family economy. Fourthly, family structure, types of marriage and intermarriage circle also has a great impact on the family status of married women.