Education of Normal Women Vs. Singing Girls

According to Confucianism women had to stay in the house and needed to take care of the children, the household and please their husband in bed. Containing this knowledge was considered enough in the early times and until the Sung Dynasty very little was done for the literary education of girls and women.[1] Women were not supposed to share their husbands intellectual interests and were strictly forbidden to interfere with his activities outside of the house.

However, the singing girls did not belong to this family world confined by Confucianism. They were the first ones to learn reading an writing as part of their professional training, making it their voices instead of the normal women, that still speak to us today.

[1] An exception is Lady Pan Chao from the later Han period (died 116 BC).