Female Role In Transforming Village Culture

The village culture is a significant force that normalizes the concepts and behaviors of rural women and molds their characteristics, and the change in village culture will inevitably affect the status of rural women and arouse the change in female family and social roles. Qualitative research is taken as the research method of this article, in which, a village is selected for in-depth field study so as to keep abreast of the various respects of daily village life, and the change in rural family formation and social relationship is analyzed, in particular, the relationship between the change in village culture and female role change is discussed. The article describes the influence of social change advanced by the interaction of external force and inherent economic and social structure of village on the daily village life during the nonagricultural transition. The article points out village presents new impetus, rules, relations and problems during the modernization, thesocial identities of villagers, their means of production, life style, values etc change accordingly; rural women obtain a higher status and make unprecedented contributions to their families, however, men still have more rights and higher status than women in the traditional culture, and male values still dominate the relationship between men and women, thus the traditional role expectation that the social regulations impose on women is not eliminated yet.The article takes the activity patterns in such fields as family life, agricultural and sideline production, leisure activities, rites and village common activities etc of women as the theme of the research and obtains the following research findings: seeing from family and social division of work in countryside, more men participate in modern activities than women, and their activity range is rather beyond their village, thus women play a more significant role in maintaining the traditional village order and perpetuating social culture; seeing from the analysis of common activities, women are of importance in composing and perpetuating social culture, their responsibilities are not in proportion to their interests and protection from systems; in social relationship of village, women are active power, but they are still subordinate to men under the influence of patriarchy; women and men are obviously asymmetric on village politics and state power, men occupy the grassroots power, and women enjoy little grassroots power of the state.The conclusions of this article are as follows: part of village culture disintegrates due to external impact under the strong influence of social change, however, certain belief and convention s'till continuebecause of the strong inertia force of the village culture. Though modern rural female role presents great change, majority of rural women still possess traditional gender role; female status in rural politics, economy and social relationship gets increase, but denying or weakening female functions in daily life is a characteristic of the village culture.Apart from above research findings, this author hopes relevant authorities and organizations take female interests and characteristics of village culture into full account in formulating policies and planning. The author holds that only the system arrangement of and policy guidance of a country are consistent with the rules and village culture and the life style of villages, can rural society keep stable and harmonious development. This is the application value of this research.