The old saying “Better to marry a widow than a divorced woman” (ning qu gua fu, bu qu sheng qi) captures a harsh moral code that long governed women’s lives. Literally, it urges a man to prefer a widow over a sheng qi—a wife still alive but cast off. In traditional society, a sheng qi was widely assumed to be at fault and thus disgraced.
This bias grew from women’s low status under Confucian norms, especially the Three Obediences and Four Virtues: obedience to father before marriage, husband during marriage, and son after a husband’s death, with virtue, modest speech, proper appearance, and domestic skill as measures of worth.
Divorce in antiquity was rarely mutual; men alone held the right to end a union, a practice called xiu qi. He li (mutual separation) was deemed humiliating for men and seldom accepted.
Legalistic norms allowed a husband to divorce only under the Seven Misconducts (qi chu)—disrespect for parents-in-law, childlessness, adultery, jealousy, loquacity, grave illness, or theft—while the Three Restraints barred divorce in cases of no surviving parents, completed mourning, or proven support in poverty. With no recognition of modern “irreconcilable differences,” a sheng qi was presumed guilty by default.
By contrast, widows who remained chaste and raised children alone were praised for loyalty and virtue, a cultural logic that fostered the old preference. Ultimately, these attitudes reflected deep gender inequality. In today’s era of growing equality, women can initiate divorce, pursue economic independence, and build their own lives, and the stigma once attached to sheng qi has faded.
