In this feminist history of eight centuries of private life in China, Francesca Bray inserts women into the history of technology and adds technology to the history of women. Bray takes issue with the Orientalist image that traditional Chinese women were imprisoned in the inner quarters, deprived of freedom and dignity, and so physically and morally deformed by footbinding and the tyrannies of patriarchy that they were incapable of productive work. She proposes a concept of gynotechnics, a set of everyday technologies that define women's roles, as a creative new way to explore how societies translate moral and social principles into a web of material forms and bodily practices. Bray examines three different aspects of domestic life in China, tracing their developments from 1000 to 1800 A.D. She begins with the shell of domesticity, the house, focusing on how domestic space embodied hierarchies of gender. She follows the shift in the textile industry from domestic production to commercial production. Despite increasing emphasis on women's reproductive roles, she argues, this cannot be reduced to childbearing. Female hierarchies within the family reinforced the power of wives, whose responsibilities included ritual activities and financial management as well as the education of children.

白馥兰(Francesca Bray)英国剑桥大学社会人类学博士，研究兴趣集中于农业体系、日常技术、社会性别、医疗与身体等方面，并专攻东亚及东南亚地区。曾居住在马来西亚乡村参加稻田种植。现任美国圣巴巴拉加州大学人类学系教授。其主要著作除本书外，尚有李约瑟主编《中国的科学与文明》之第六卷第二分册(农业)(1984)、《稻米经济：亚洲社会的技术与发展》(1994)、《明代中国的技术与社会，1368—1644年》(2000)。本书于1997年出版后，曾于1999年获美国技术史学会所颁发的德克斯特奖(DxterPrize)。