Women and Confucian Cultures

"Contributing authors in this book played a very influential role for me. I did my PhD dissertation on the rise of the Korean Women’s Movement after the fall of the dictatorship there in 1998 and the rapid changes that South Korea, a country significantly shaped by Confucianism, has undergone in terms of gender roles in the last two decades. What I found particularly interesting about the arguments in this book is that it really takes away the common assumption that culture is something that is static. It paints a very dynamic picture about culture and gendered roles even in outwardly highly patriarchal societies. For example, in Korea, which I know better than the other two cases, several of the articles in the book really highlight that during the Koryo Dynasty, which was from the 900s to the late 1300s, women actually had very strong political, social and economic freedoms. The Confucian Choson Dynasty (which was set up in 1392 and it went right through until 1910) saw progressive restrictions put on women’s mobility and the extent in which they could participate in the public sphere. Women became very much segregated within the home, but despite these critical changes there was still scope for agency. However, there is a very interesting case made that with Confucianism what was critical was the nexus between education and political power. What you saw in Korea was women capitalising on this cultural space and becoming much more active participants in writing. King Sejong of Korea actually created a new script which was phonetic and this allowed women who had had less educational opportunities to men to start engaging in writing. So in this context women were not only engaging with the dominant male literary tradition but also with a new female literary tradition, and thereby defending a space for women’s perspectives."