ldn't be settled at the family and local level. The result really was a good deal of stability, at least until the end of dynastic eras, when good government and strong borders broke down catastrophically.
             Unfortunately this Song era prosperity and cultural continuity did not improve the status and Chinese women's status and lives. Confucianism had always seen women as subordinate to men, and believed that no woman belonged in the public sphere of warfare, government rule, and anything else of the same sort. Women were never allowed to hold any Confucian government office, and the few women who held visible power within royal courts usually ended up being criticized, often as evil Dowager Empresses, by later Confucian historians. But through the Tang era (th
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