Essay On Confucianism And How It Changed Today

In many countries nowadays the community marked a radical rethinking of the social role of women in society. Each scholar aims at ensuring their rights and opportunities. Equal participation of women in political and economic life of the country is considered to be a feature of a democratic community as the necessary condition for progress in the socio-economic and cultural development. However, the process of gender equality still belongs to the complex processes in modern East Asian countries.
Confucianism has always been known as a sexist approach. It is fair to mention that ” If one argues that by “people” or “persons” Confucius actually refers to men, then one is saying that Confucius does not regard women as persons” (Jiang, 2009). Chinese women were the victims of this science and their rights were oppressed significantly. However, with the upcoming of Western civilization, traditionally Confucian societies entered a new period. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that Japan has the clearest gender equality, since Western civilization has broken Japanese artificial social order and gave the woman an opportunity for the free development of their abilities and to influence on the society without males’ interfering.
Under the influence of European civilization all the spheres of Japanese life underwent a change. The educational system has been completely transformed and delivered in the European manner. Both the government and the people realized that the root of European civilization lies in its education, and that only the reformation of public education may bring the development to its residents. That was how the women's education started, which was neglected before. To sum everything up it must be said that genders are not regulated by the ideological kinship of Confucianism. The role of women in modern Japan looks as follows. At a public meeting the wife makes every effort to show that the husband is the head of the family, but in reality, everything is completely opposite, and it knows any sociologist. The woman is a monarch and the commander of Japanese family. In Japan, the status of mothers (both social and economical) is pretty high - she manages the family budget, makes decisions, so in modern Japan the women's culture is interpreted in the deepest sense. Reference
Jiang, X. (2009). CONFUCIANISM, WOMEN, AND SOCIAL CONTEXTS. Journal Of
Chinese Philosophy, 36(2), 228-242. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2009.01516.x