Footbinding was a millennium-long practice in which ethnically, Han Chinese families would alter the feet of young girls. The leading explanation of footbinding in interdisciplinary circles is the labor market hypothesis. It posits that parents were motivated to footbind daughters to keep them spinning and weaving, thus making money for the family. Lacking direct means of testing their hypothesis, advocates of the labor market hypothesis present allegedly disconfirming evidence against the major competing explanation of footbinding, an evolutionary social sciences hypothesis according to which footbinding is positively related to hypergamous marriage. This paper presents a methodological critique of this case against a hypergamy hypothesis for footbinding. This critique uncovers erroneous assumptions, methodological problems, ad hoc data modification, inaccurate operationalization, and confounded testing of the hypergamy hypothesis and concludes that this hypothesis ought not to be rejected at this time.

中文翻译：

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装订，一夫多妻制和手工业：评估劳动力市场对装订的解释

缠足是一千年的习俗，汉族家庭在种族上会改变年轻姑娘的脚。跨学科领域的束缚的主要解释是劳动力市场假说。它假定父母有动力缠住女儿，使她们保持旋转和编织，从而为家庭赚钱。据称缺乏劳动力市场假说的直接手段，劳动力市场假说的拥护者提出了反对对缠足这一主要竞争解释的证据，而这种解释是对足缠结与一夫多妻婚姻成正相关的一种进化的社会科学假设。本文提出了针对这种情况的方法论批判，反对针对绑扎的一夫一妻制假说。这种批评揭示了错误的假设，方法论问题，