This article from Dec. 23 on gender balance in Korea is fascinating. It shows how a change in a country's economy and political system can affect deep-seated prejudices (in this case, Korea's economic boom and shift to democracy helped decrease sexism).
Where Boys Were Kings, a Shift Toward Baby Girls
By CHOE SANG-HUN
In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys is fast receding. And that has led to what seems to be a decrease in the number of abortions performed after ultrasounds that reveal the sex of a fetus....When I read this story, I wondered: when will this happen in China?
It is heartening that China and India are now looking at South Korea as a "trendsetter in Asia," and whether these similar socio-economic changes can happen in their own countries.
It's also ironic that Confucian values, which are looked upon as a positive aspect of Asian culture (leading to respect, politeness, caring for your parents in their old age) could also cause such a negative, widespread phenomenon of sexism:
The study suggests that the country’s former authoritarian rulers helped slow the transition by upholding laws and devising policies that supported a continuation of Confucian hierarchy, which encourages fealty not only to family patriarchs, but also to the nation’s leaders.Perhaps sometimes I think America is too liberal, creating frivolous lawsuits and too many borderline cases in favor of free speech, but there is something to be said for democracy helping to bring about equal rights.
With the move toward democracy in the late 1980s, the concept of equal rights for men and women began to creep into Koreans’ thinking. In 1990, the law guaranteeing men their family’s inheritance — a cornerstone of the Confucian system — was the first of the so-called family laws to fall; the rest would be dismantled over the next 15 years.
I'm really glad this change is happening in Korea, and that even the government started campaigns promoting the value of daughters. It will be interesting to watch how China changes as it increasingly industrializes and grows.
3 comments:
It appears to me that along with the old patriarchal Confucian laws being changed, the biggest factor in this shift is the emergence of South Korea as a fully developed modern (post?)industrial society, with its attendant social transformations. The traditional Confucian society was structured so that having sons meant the line would continue to be powerful and the family would still be there to take care of you. If it was anything like the Chinese system, then daughters were pretty much given up to the son-in-law's family, so couldn't be counted on. Since families were extended clans, having lots of sons meant expanding the clan and having a lot more support in old age, especially with filial piety. Daughters did you no good. But today, with the modern nuclear family, and with daughters and sons being more or less equivalent socially, having more kids in general doesn't do one much good because they go off to form their own nuclear families. The clan does not stick together and live together. Old people end up in rest homes. And since sons are more likely to abandon their parents to the rest homes, while daughters are more likely to care for them in their dotage, you're much better off if you have daughters now.
China and India are in the process of modernizing. There is a growing middle class in both those countries which probably have more Western attitudes towards gender equality. But both also have large, poor, rural populations holding onto traditional values. Until or unless China and India can improve the lot of their rural poor, and grow their middle class until it is the majority of their population, you are not likely to see a similar transformation as South Korea, whose population today is probably mostly urban.
Thanks your your comments! For the first one, if you read the rest of the article, you'd see that you were spot on. Korea's system was patterned after Confucian values, definitely.
For the second comment, that's a good insight. And since China and India have larger populations, that'll probably take a while...
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