Why did ancient Chinese woman have no rights

This is due to the culture of ancient China, in which the male was the ruler/head-of-house/autocrat. The female was seen as being subservient, docile, unable to cope with the demands placed on a male. This is actually common to many cultures (throughout the Roman Empire, medieval Europe, several countries in Africa today, etc.) – the culture valued raw brute strength and physical prowess which is more typical of males. This caused the overall culture to become skewed towards valuing the male and devaluing the female, ending at the logical conclusion that women have no rights and are basically the property of their father, brother or husband.

This view is outlined in great detail in the Torah, the Old Testament and a fair amount of the Quran, incidentally – orthodox Judaism, orthodox Christianity and orthodox Islam all advocate for the subservience of females to males today (August 2012).