In the past I've commented on Prof. Kwame Appiah's book on Moral Revolutions, which includes a chapter on the end of footbinding in mainland China. He argued that footbinding was a status symbol (Veblen would agree) which became tarnished as "old-fashioned" and not modern in the early 20th century when modernization was very important in China. So women with bound feet lost their value in marriage, so binding ended quickly-a revolution in morals.
Made sense to me. Had some resonance because my aunt and uncle worked for the YMCA in China during that time. Among the things they brought back were pairs of sandals/shoes for bound feet.
But I ran across this paper, with this abstract:
We analyze the economic motives for the sudden demise in foot-binding, a self-harming custom widely practiced by Chinese females for centuries. We use newly-discovered Taiwanese data to estimate the extent to which females unbound their feet in response to the rapid growth in sugarcane cultivation in the early 20th century, growth which significantly boosted the demand for female labor. We find that cane cultivation significantly induced unbinding, with the IV estimations utilizing cane railroads – lines built exclusively for cane transportation – support a causal interpretation of the estimated effect. This finding implies that increased female employment opportunities can help eliminate norms that are harmful for females. Further analysis suggests that the need for human capital improvement was more likely to have driven the effects of cane cultivation, rather than the increased intra-household bargaining power for females.
Sounds as if the economists have an entirely different perspective. Since the paper text isn't freely available, I can't evaluate it. But intuitively it makes sense that upper class/leisure class women would have their feet bound.
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