Patriarchy In East Asia

The role and significance of patriarchy in East Asia varies greatly according to the interplay between deeply entrenched cultural norms, economic change, and government policy. The aim of this book, therefore, is to offer an historical perspective on these issues combined with an analysis of the transitions and outcomes that have occurred in the status of women over the course of modernization and industrialization in five East Asian societies – Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, and China. The narrative is interwoven with a discussion of contemporary issues such as the persistence of tradition and gender discrimination, how gender roles undermine the development of healthier marriage and family relationships (and better relations among the generations), the lack of full equality for women in employment, falling birth rates, and rising divorce rates. Patriarchy in East Asia is the first study of its kind undertaken by a sociologist who is fluent in all of the local languages, thereby providing a rare level of access in terms of research of primary sources.

The on-going reconfiguration of geo-political and economic forces across the globe has created a new institutional and moral environment for East Asian family life and gender dynamics. Indeed, modernisation in East Asia has brought about increases in women’s education levels and participation in the labour force, a delay in marriage age, lower birth rates, and smaller family size. And yet, despite the process of modernization, traditional systems such as Confucianism and patriarchal rules, continue to shape gender politics and family relationships in East Asia. This book examines gender politics and family culture in East Asia in light of both the overwhelming changes that modernization and globalization have brought to the region, and the structural restrictions that women in East Asian societies continue to face in their daily lives. Across three sections, the contributors to this volume focus on marriage and motherhood, religion and family, and migration. In doing so, they reveal how actions and decisions implemented by the state trigger changes in gender and family at the local level, the impact of increasing internal and transnational migration on East Asian culture, and how religion interweaves with the state in shaping gender dynamics and daily life within the family. With case studies from across the region, including South Korea, Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, gender studies, anthropology, sociology and social policy.

Gender in Modern East Asia explores the history of women and gender in China, Korea, and Japan from the seventeenth century to the present. This unique volume treats the three countries separately within each time period while also placing them in global and regional contexts. Its transnational and integrated approach connects the cultural, economic, and social developments in East Asia to what is happening across the wider world. The text focuses specifically on the dynamic histories of sexuality; gender ideology, discourse, and legal construction; marriage and the family; and the gendering of work, society, culture, and power. Important themes and topics woven through the text include Confucianism, writing and language, the role of the state in gender construction, nationalism, sexuality and prostitution, New Women and Modern Girls, feminisms, "comfort" women, and imperialism. Accessibly written and comprehensive, Gender in Modern East Asia is a much-needed contribution to the study of the region.

The book offers one of the first detailed studies of South Asian women, it provides new empirical data on the issues apparent in South Asian women's lives by 'giving voice' to a group of women who would otherwise remain silent. It is based upon an ethnographic study of a small South Asian community in an inner city. The book offers a new and compelling account of South Asian women, as well as focussing on the ways in which gender and 'race' interact in women’s lives. The book offers an important theoretical contribution to the area of feminist theory. The concept of patriarchy is contested and reworked and applied to the study of South Asian women and their cultural experiences. In this sense, practices such as arranged marriages, dowries, domestic labour and domestic finance are analyzed as different influences of patriarchy inside the household, as well as education and the labour market as influences of patriarchy outside the household.

This volume examines the nature of married women's participation in the economies of three East Asian countries—Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. In addition to asking what is similar or different about women's economic participation in this region of the world compared to Western societies, the book also asks how women's work patterns vary across the three countries.

This book paints a vivid picture of women's active involvement in reshaping intimate and public sexual life in East Asia. In bringing together exciting new feminist research on sexuality from East Asia and making it available to a wider audience, East Asian Sexualities unsettles stereotypes, rectifies lack of awareness and demonstrates that East Asia matters. The chapters address the diversity and variety of everyday sexual lives and sexual politics in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They range from workplace sexual cultures, trans-national sexual relations, the conditions of sex-work and the emergence of new sexual desires, cultures and movements. The contributors highlight the gendered and sexual consequences of globalization and rapid social change. In doing so, they engage with western debates on late modernity while also exploring the contested understandings of modernization and westernization in the East. This is a collection which illuminates the local situations in which women's sexual lives are lived and offers fresh perspectives on global issues.

This book rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between "Confucianisms" and "women."

The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Gender Studies presents up-to-date theoretical and conceptual developments in key areas of the field, taking a multi-disciplinary and comparative approach. Featuring contributions by leading scholars of Gender Studies to provide a cutting-edge overview of the field, this handbook includes examples from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong and covers the following themes: theorising gender relations; women’s and feminist movements; work, care and migration; family and intergenerational relationships; cultural representation; masculinity; and state, militarism and gender. This handbook is essential reading for scholars and students of Gender and Women’s Studies, as well as East Asian societies, social policy and culture.

Barbara N. Ramusack surveys the prescriptive roles and lived experiences of women from the period of the early states to the 1990s.